WINDOWS ON TO HISTORY
Windows are too often treated as merely providers of light, ventilation and views. But there is little more terrifying than a dark window with an unknown face peering in. And there are few more useful places for covert entrances and exits, as prime minister Stanley Baldwin found in December 1936. Pursued by the press, he finally crept into Buckingham Palace through a back window, to talk with King Edward VIII about his forthcoming abdication announcement.
“The history of architecture is also the history of windows,” pronounced Le Corbusier, a pioneer of modernist architecture. As we shall see through the following seven examples, the history of windows is also the history of war, politics, technology, aesthetics and morality. Not simply “the eyes of the house”, windows open up connections between architecture and socio-cultural change, from international conflict to the welfare state.
1 On the defensive
To see how windows changed history, look no further than Chepstow Castle. One of the first stone castles in Britain, it was built from 1067, a reward from William the Conqueror to his follower, William Fitz Osbern.
