[MUSIC PLAYING]

K. MICHAEL HAYS: Architecture, from its very beginning, has been made of stone, and
when it hasn't been
made of stone, it's been made to look like it's made of stone.
Windows may have glass in them, but windows in a stone wall are simply openings.
The glass itself is not important.
The development of technologies that allow the production of large sheets of glass
and
the materials with tensile strength, like steel, had the power to enormously change
the way buildings are made.
But how would that necessarily affect architecture?
How would that change architecture's
representational function?
How would that change architecture as the art of building?
The advances in modern technology and the invention of new materials
were not an inevitable helpful contributor to the goals of architecture culture.
How can one apply a symbolic language, an already existing symbolic architectural
language
that was developed over thousands of years as an expression of the heavy
compressive
forces in masonry, to lightweight
and thin structures
of metal and glass?
How does one achieve the requisite monumentality and profundity with such flimsy
materials?
This was the primary problem for the architects of the 20th century.