Through advances in production and treatment technologies, transparent glass has become an increasingly versatile material and a global hallmark of modern architecture. In the shape of invisible barriers, it defines spaces while simultaneously shaping their lighting, noise, and climate conditions. Despite these unique architectural qualities, little is known regarding the human experience with glass barriers. Is a material that has been described as being simultaneously there and not there from an architectural perspective, actually there and/or not there from perceptual, behavioral, (...) and social points of view? In this article, we review systematic observations and experimental studies that explore the impact of transparent barriers on human cognition and action. In doing so, the importance of empirical and multidisciplinary approaches to inform the use of glass in contemporary architecture is highlighted and key questions for future inquiry are identified. (shrink)

This study examines the principles we apply, when people, objects and animals are to be organized in relation to other representatives of their kind. Most cross-cultural studies on personal space focus on cultural differences, but here we look for proxetics as well as proxemics. 793 subjects from six countries situated in four different climate zones are tested with a projective simulation measure. A number of cross-cultural similarities are documented, and it is suggested that six of these are examples of high-level (...) universals in the sense of Norenzayan and Heine. But spacing also differs, and participants from Greenland, Finland, and Denmark systematically keep a larger interpersonal distance than subjects from Italy, India and Cameroon, which confirms the classic difference between southern 'contact-cultures' and northern 'low-contact cultures'. It is documented how personal space shrinks or expands depending on context and depending on whether a person occupies a territory or arrives at a territory occupied by somebody else. Personal space may even 'rub off ' on a person's belongings, and this opens up for a whole new area of spatial relations not studied before. (shrink)