The glass of windows, drinking glasses, light bulbs, jars. Cheap, transparent, recyclable forever, breaks into sharp pieces when stressed. The default glass of the city — the material that turned the building wall into a window onto the street.
Most-produced glass type globally. Composition ~73% SiO₂, 14% Na₂O, 9% CaO, plus minor MgO, Al₂O₃. Working temperature ~1500 °C; glass transition ~570 °C. Float-glass process (Pilkington, 1959) produces the flat, optically clear sheet now standard for architectural glazing.
The arcade was made possible by glass — by the thought that a wall could be a window, that a building could let the city look at the city. To work in glass is to design in the second person; the wall sees the viewer back. The flâneur walks under iron and through glass, and everything becomes commodity in the same act of seeing.
As a transparent building material, glass plays a key part in architecture, because its invisibility means that it can almost dissolve the material quality of the building. It forms an effective spatial conclusion, while fulfilling the basic human need for daylight.
Glass is a case in point in that it possesses the potential for a wide range of phenomenological effects and is highly sensitive to the way in which it is handled. Its potential for transparency is dependent on the manner of its exposure to light, the angle from which it is being seen, and the chemical and physical characteristics given to it in its manufacturing. Its eventual appearance (or disappearance) is dependent on factors beginning with its initial chemical recipe, through parameters of its installation, and finally in the temporal conditions at the moment at which it is being viewed.
Principled BSDF defaults derived from the sphere transparent finish. Reasonable seed for Blender, Substance, Keyshot, Rhino — tune per material. Or grab the whole library at once: ForMaterials library →
# finish: transparent albedo #c0d8e0 metallic 0.00 roughness 0.05 ior 1.50 transmission 1.00 clearcoat 0.00 sheen 0.00 anisotropic 0.00 thickness 1.00 attenuation_distance 0.60
{
"albedo": "#c0d8e0",
"metallic": 0.0,
"roughness": 0.05,
"ior": 1.5,
"transmission": 1.0,
"clearcoat": 0.0,
"sheen": 0.0,
"anisotropic": 0.0,
"thickness": 1.0,
"attenuation_distance": 0.6
}
# Blender 4.x — Principled BSDF
# Soda-Lime Glass · finish: transparent
import bpy
mat = bpy.data.materials.new(name="mat_soda_lime_glass")
mat.use_nodes = True
bsdf = mat.node_tree.nodes["Principled BSDF"]
bsdf.inputs["Base Color"].default_value = (0.5271, 0.6867, 0.7454, 1.0)
bsdf.inputs["Metallic"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Roughness"].default_value = 0.050
bsdf.inputs["IOR"].default_value = 1.500
bsdf.inputs["Transmission Weight"].default_value = 1.000
bsdf.inputs["Coat Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Sheen Weight"].default_value = 0.000
bsdf.inputs["Anisotropic"].default_value = 0.000
# KeyShot 11+ — lux Python API, Generic material
# Soda-Lime Glass · finish: transparent
# Run from Window → Scripting Console
import lux
mat = lux.createMaterial(name="mat_soda_lime_glass", materialType="Generic")
mat.setProperty("diffuse", (192, 216, 224)) # 8-bit sRGB
mat.setProperty("metallic", 0.000)
mat.setProperty("roughness", 0.050)
mat.setProperty("indexOfRefraction", 1.500)
mat.setProperty("transparency", 1.000)
mat.setProperty("coatingWeight", 0.000)
{
"_format": "Substance Designer / Painter \u2014 pbrMetalRough constants",
"_about": "Soda-Lime Glass \u00b7 finish: transparent",
"baseColor": {
"r": 0.5271,
"g": 0.6867,
"b": 0.7454
},
"metallic": 0.0,
"roughness": 0.05,
"ior": 1.5,
"opacity": 0.0,
"anisotropyLevel": 0.0,
"_notes": "Channels listed are the standard Substance pbrMetalRough output. Drop into a Uniform Color node per channel, or as the constant input on a layered stack."
}{
"asset": {
"version": "2.0",
"generator": "ForMatter"
},
"materials": [
{
"name": "mat_soda_lime_glass",
"pbrMetallicRoughness": {
"baseColorFactor": [
0.5271,
0.6867,
0.7454,
1.0
],
"metallicFactor": 0.0,
"roughnessFactor": 0.05
},
"extensions": {
"KHR_materials_transmission": {
"transmissionFactor": 1.0
}
}
}
]
}# USD Preview Surface — UsdShade.MaterialLook prim attributes
# Soda-Lime Glass · finish: transparent
def Material "mat_soda_lime_glass" {
token outputs:surface.connect = </mat_soda_lime_glass/PreviewSurface.outputs:surface>
def Shader "PreviewSurface" {
uniform token info:id = "UsdPreviewSurface"
color3f inputs:diffuseColor = (0.5271, 0.6867, 0.7454)
float inputs:metallic = 0.000
float inputs:roughness = 0.050
float inputs:ior = 1.500
float inputs:opacity = 0.000
float inputs:clearcoat = 0.000
token outputs:surface
}
}
ASTM C162 glass terminology; Owens-Illinois / Verallia container-glass technical literature.
Blown, cut, and engraved glass vessel; accession 2008.63.1; 65 x 6 1/4 x 10 inches; gift of the artist.
Kilncast glass, 3D printed pattern, and found object. Accession 2020.51. Viviano kiln-casts urban silhouettes from glass — the city's industrial footprint translated into a slumped, cooled volume.
House vocabulary — terms ForMatter uses with intent.
Materials and processes for people who design and make things.
A local-first library of materials, processes, applications, and finishes — equal weight, citable everywhere, with cost-over-volume curves, trade-off profiles, equipment-tier filters, and second-life paths layered onto the data so a student can move from "what is this" toward "what's actually buildable here, now, by me." Part of the renato.design ecosystem — sibling of Plenum, Specimen, Ingenue, gesture, graf, and the Renato Rhino plug-ins. Form and matter, inseparable.
Half of teaching materials is teaching how the material is made into the thing. The standard subscription library was always light on that half. The wedge here isn't better samples or a prettier interface — it's treating Process as a peer entity, not a footnote.
Conway's Material World on raw materials, Lefteri's Making It on processes, Forty's Concrete and Culture, Sparke's Design in Context, Bürdek's Design: History, Theory and Practice of Product Design, Schröpfer's Material Design on materials in architecture, Winchester's The Perfectionists on tolerance, Minshall's Your Life Is Manufactured on the global supply chain, von Busch's Making Trouble on material activism, Were's How Materials Matter, Hegger / Drexler / Zeumer's Basics Materials, Untracht and McCreight on metalsmithing, USDA Forest Products Lab on woods, GIA on gemstones, Schott / CoorsTek / Toray / Owens Corning datasheets, MakeItFrom for verifiable property numbers, ASM Handbook, ISO standards. Museum holdings draw from the Met, MAD, V&A, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Newark Museum of Art, British Museum, Heard Museum, Smithsonian NMAI, Eiteljorg Museum, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cranbrook Art Museum, and Grand Rapids Art Museum — collection-record permalinks only, designer overview pages and exhibition listings excluded. Voice blocks now ride on every entry kind — material, process, application, and finish — and include Ruskin on iron, Anni Albers on twining, Greg Lynn on the shred-and-teeth NURBS lineage, Pugin on the metal that won't be hammered, Barthes / Yanagi / Benjamin channeled within their philosophy; Sparke, Bürdek, Forty, Conway, Schröpfer, Minshall, von Busch, Lefteri, Pat Pruitt, Mary Lee Hu, Tom Joyce, Albert Paley, and the rest of the contemporary makers quoted verbatim with citation. All cited.
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