Wall Games

Toledo Museum of Art Glass Pavilion. SANAA Architects. Ohio 2006.

The spatial organization comes from the "idea of the wall and its relationship with space". "Normally one wall has two sides , so if you define the shape of the wall, this will affect two adjacent spaces... We decided to make a wall with two thin membranes not necessarily linked together, and we found that this created a kind of double wall with two thin membranes not necessarily linked together, and we found that this created a kind of double wall between these two spaces and marked the independence of each room. Both are close and you can perceive one from the other, but they keep their Independence". The double wall thus creates a third space between the glazed volumes of the room that is purely 'relational'. It connects the volumes visually but not physically. Its purpose is to articulate the architecture, not to facilitate circulation through it.

Sejima's description is telling: " All ( the) glass is transparent but there are so many curved layers that the building has an opaque feeling to it. You cannot grasp if the reflection is from one layer of glass or another, or whether you are just seeing the other side of the museum. The building produces a completely different feeling of transparency. You can see through it, it is opaque." Transparency works in this building as a tool to layer spaces, rather than images and planes. In other words, transparency operates here in terms of projection, generating space beyond the object itself, which is experienced optically but which is immaterial.

Reference: TENSIONS IN TRANSPARENCY by EVE BLAU