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Impermanent Monument for Intimate Machines: Apple’s Glass Cube
Abstract
Glass as a material has become fundamentally linked with Apple’s products and architecture, ranging from its touch screens–the intimate medium through which most personal news and images are exchanged–to emblematic structural glass stairs in its flagship stores. Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue Apple store’s all-glass cube (2006) is a monument made of glass. The cube, while possessing characteristics of traditional monuments¬¬, blurs the prevailing notions of a monument by using the most advanced glass technologies of the time. Counter to the traditional monuments built with permanent, opaque materials, the cube is nearly all-glass, a material perceived as fragile and impermanent. The cube’s glass walls and roof, which are laminated with hurricane- and bullet-resistant ionoplast interlayers, serve both as the structure and the enclosure. Further underscoring its monumentality, the glass cube has been, since the store’s opening in 2006, ritualistically reconstructed three times with the most current glass technologies, then ceremoniously revealed to display its technical prowess, as if it were the launch of a new Apple product. The cube is a profoundly effective symbol–a monument–for a company that has shortened the distance between humans and machines through glass interface.
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In his article "The Variety of Scale" in the December issue, Cecil Elliott discussed a concept which, though of manifold intellectual ramifications, is relatively free from emotive content. The case is very different with the subject of the following article. For reasons connected with the history of modern architecture and the ideals of certain of the most articulate of its pioneers and theorists, monumentality is a word which, encountered on the printed page, provokes in most of us an instant reaction of a non-rational kind. Yet, as Professor Elliott points out, there has as a matter of historical fact been a revival of monumentality, and of the monument too, during the past two decades. In view of this, the time has clearly come for a reconsideration of the subject of monuments and monumentality.
Oue donneriez vous ma belle Pour revoir votre man? Je donnerai Versailles, Paris et Saint Denis a es tours de Notre Dame Et le clocher de mon pays Aupres de ma blonde Ou'd fait bon, fait bon, fait bon. --From an old French song,"Aupres de ma blonde" 1. Monuments are human landmarks which men have created as symbols for their ideals, for their aims, and for their actions. They are intended to outlive the period which originated them, and constitute a heritage for future generations. As such, they form a link between the past and the future. 2. Monuments are the expression of man's highest cultural needs. They have to satisfy the eternal demand of the people for translation of their collective force into symbols. The most vital monuments are those which express the feeling and thinking of this collective force-the people. 3. Every bygone period which shaped a real cultural life had the power and the capacity to create these symbols. Monuments are, therefore, only possible in periods in which a unifying consciousness and unifying culture exists. Periods which exist for the moment have been unable to create lasting monuments. 4. The last hundred years have witnessed the devaluation of monumentality. This does not mean that there is any lack of formal monuments or architectural examples pretending to serve this purpose: but the so-called monuments of recent date have, with rare exceptions, become empty shells. They in no way represent the spirit or the collective feeling of modern times. S. This decline and misuse of monumentality is the principal reason why modern architects have deliberately disregarded the monument and revolted against it. Modern architecture, like modern painting and sculpture, had to start the hard way. It began by tackling the simpler problems, the more utilitarian buildings like low rent housing, schools, office buildings, hospitals, and similar structures. Today modern architects know that buildings cannot be conceived as isolated units, that they have to be incorporated into the vaster urban schemes. There are no frontiers between architecture and town planning, just as there are no frontiers between the city and the region. Correlation between them is necessary. Monuments should constitute the most powerful accents in these vast schemes. 6. A new step lies ahead. Post-war changes in the whole economic structure of nations may bring with them the organization of community life in the city which has been practically neglected up to date.
This paper introduces the materials, design methods, and details used to create glass structures from small unframed glazing screens to the largest glass walls and roofs. It includes information on the use of glass in floors, staircases, and bridges. The purpose of this paper is to give a state-of-the-art overview of current technology and to look at ideas being developed in the laboratory. Glass is an unforgiving material and the paper explains the measures taken to reduce risk of failure.
While human beings cope with the production and distribution of goods by trying to achieve maximum efficiencies in energy expenditures, the basic way they symbolize power is through the conspicuous consumption of energy, control of which is the fundamental measure of power. Conspicuous consumption occurs in the form of monumental construction, supporting large numbers of energy consumers, production of high energy‐consuming luxury goods, and an emphasis on non‐useful movement (processions, needlessly large rooms, etc.). By expanding the concept of energy‐use to cover conspicuous consumption as well as efficiency of production, it can be seen as a basic factor in shaping the political as well as the economic behaviour of human beings and can explain why, as systems of inequality evolve, monumental architecture becomes an increasingly prominent feature of the archaeological record. This enlarged concept would also broaden a materialist perspective on human behaviour to take account of many significant aspects of the ideational components of such behaviour that appear in the archaeological record.
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