Immaterial World

Book excerpt: Today the excitement in architecture derives from the tension between the need for privacy and the impulse toward community. This unique survey of buildings and interiors captures the multilayered experience that is engaged whenever we look out of—or into—a work of architecture. Immaterial Worldexamines the built environment as a reflection of the terrors and pleasures of exposure, information overload, and abundance of every sort. Twenty-five projects from around the world by such well-known architects as Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Morphosis, Christian de Portzamparc, Renzo Piano, and many others, are presented. These works range from complete transparency to bunkerlike opacity, depending upon who’s doing the looking and who or what is being seen.