ABOUT THIS CPD EVENT
Industrialists surveying the ongoing age of glass have sought to pinpoint their favored substance’s origin, adding layers of history, nostalgia, and even romance to their product line.
For this this reason in 1856, Henry Chance, a partner in the eponymous firm that had provided the glass for London’s Crystal Palace, ruminated in a lecture about the roots of window glass: “Pompeii, awakened from a slumber of seventeen hundred years, has proved the existence of window glass in the days of the early emperors. In a small chamber, attached to the bathing room of a private dwelling-house, excavated about the year 1763, was found, ‘a window, which, . . . still held, when it was found, four panes of glass.’ ” The drawn-out, staccato rhythm of this revelation must have added drama to this lecture on early manufacture.
Likewise, in the twentieth century, the corporate authors of Glass History Manufacture and Its Universal Application began with a chapter called “The Romance of Glass,” which includes this origin story: “Many thousands of years before the Christian Era this romance began. It is older far than Pliny’s tale of the Tyrian mariners who, he recounts, landed in some Mediterranean harbor to cook themselves food, and to prop their kettles over the fire used lumps of natron . . . ‘tis a plausible fancy: true or not, what matter?”
It is also true that this particular version of the story ends rather less romantically, with a detailed description of the products made available as of 1923 by the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company.
This CPD event, based on the book The Age of Glass - A Cultural History of Glass in Modern and Contemporary Architecture by Stephen Eskilson, captures the cultural and technological ascension of glass in modern and contemporary architecture. Wedded to the idea that glass is a culturally elastic material with immense symbolic resonance, it traces a series of interwoven threads regarding what glass means and how it has produced and dispersed meaning over the past two centuries. While not immersed in the minutiae of glass technology, it covers the highlights of the industrialization of glass that began centuries ago and continues through to today.
Outside of the technological story, there is the role of glass in the stylistic and ideological development of architecture that needs to be considered as well. As glass has crept quietly, if inexorably, into a position of great architectural prominence, we need to sort through some of the events that have gotten us here and examine what the future might bring
PROFESSIONAL COMPETENCY
• Architectural history, theory, and precedent.
• Architectural Design
• Construction Technology
DURATION AND CPD:
The event is available as a pre-recording with a duration of ± 6 hours. You may stop and continue later. On the last day of every month a list of those who have succesfully completed the event will be extracted from the system and CPD certificates genereate - these certificates will be available on the e-Portal with the first two weeks of the next month.
It is validated for 0.6 CPD Category 1 points for SACAP registered professionals.
PRESENTER:
Frans Dekker is the Managing Director of SAIAT and since 2008 has been involved in presenting CPD workshops for SAIAT.
COSTS:
- SAIAT members R 540.00
- Other professionals / Guests R 600.00
- Students R 50.00
(All inclusive of VAT)
Please note that SAIAT offers a 4-month payment plan. Please complete the Instalment Agreement and DebiCheck manadate here.
