Treacherous Transparencies, a book by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, is the first publication produced through the Mies Crown Hall Americas Prize inaugural cycle. As part of the MCHAP mission to honor the best built work in the Americas, the author of each winning project works with IIT Architecture and MCHAP to produce a work as part of their academic appointment. 1111 Lincoln Road in Miami Beach, Florida, USA by Herzog & de Meuron was named MCHAP2009-2013 winner during the MCHAP Symposium in October 2014.
Treacherous Transparencies analyzes transparency as expressed in architecture and art in an attempt to understand the intentions and objectives that underlie its use by pertinent architects and artists.
The publication looks at a few important works by selected artists and architects who work with transparency as an artistic strategy, which they implement primarily by using glass and mirrors but other media as well. The architects and artists listed together in this context form an unlikely alliance: Bruno Taut, Ivan Leonidov, Marcel Duchamp, Mies van der Rohe, Dan Graham, and Gerhard Richter. But they do have something in common: their work marks salient way stations in the story of modernism up to the present day.
Treacherous Transparencies was published by IITAC Press with Actar in English and German which have been released in July and with Gili in Spanish which will be released in September.