Translucent structures and materials also occur in nature and when they do, there is always a functional reason. Where does that fascination come from, what is it with architects and transparency? Is it a longing for the ephemeral and immaterial, or is it simply that transparency satisfies a basic human need for light? And the number and variety of materials that can be used to manipulate light penetration is growing by the day, as are the ways in which they achieve this – through structure, texture, volume, colour, relief, prisms, openness, an illusion of depth and reflection. It turns out that architects and designers most often select ‘transparency’ when searching for a material. At visitors can search for materials on a variety of characteristics, such as gloss, texture, hardness, temperature, acoustics, smell and transparency. They can be dense materials like glass or have an open structure, like wire mesh or a woven fabric. It’s a beautiful word and yet seldom used by architects and designers for materials that allow light to pass through them, either transparent (crystal-clear), or translucent (‘misty’, diffuse and ‘vague’). It is related to ‘phantom’, something apparently sensed but having no physical reality. Materials that are light-permeable are usually called ‘transparent’ or translucent’, although it might be more accurate to call them ‘diaphanous’ – of such fine texture as to allow light to pass through translucent or transparent (from dia-, ‘through’+ phainen,‘to show, to appear’).

Example of translucent materials