M
y favorite windows of all time belong the Elizabethan manor, Hardwick Hall, designed by the architect,
Robert Smythson between 1590 and 1597 for Bess of
Hardwick, the richest woman in England except for Elizabeth I. These windows are majestically vertical, minutely
mullioned. In my mind they constitute a perfect window
wall over three centuries before Walter Gropius created
the Fagus Factory (1911-13).
Hardwick���s windows assert the mansion���s unassailability���the end of the house as fortress and beginning of
the home as invitation--to guests and nature. Before
Hardwick, castles and houses were fortifications intended above all to keep intruders out. Windows, on the
contrary, imply seeing and being seen--voyeurism and
exposure. Some windows are for spectacles, others for
secrets. If eyes are the windows of the soul, then windows, at their best, are the soul of a house, the expression of a building���s relationship to its own interior and to
the outside world.
Fast-forward to Gropius��� contemporary, the Constructivist architect, Konstantin Melnikov, and his greateest work,
his own 1929 house in Moscow. Built as two interlocking brick cylinders, the front one is lit by a straight glazed
wall at the front of the house. But it is the back cylinder
which intrigues, with its curved surface pierced by small,
geometrically arranged hexagonal windows which give
HYLAND
