“If we wish to raise our culture to a higher level, we are forced . . . to transform our architecture. We shall only succeed in doing this when we remove the element of enclosure from the rooms in which we live. We can only do this, however, with glass architecture, which allows the light of the sun, moon and stars to enter not merely through a few windows set in the wall, but through as many walls as possible—walls of coloured glass. The new milleu created in this way must bring us a new culture. . . . Then we should have a pradise on earth.”

—Paul Scheerbart, from Glasarchitektur (Glass Architecture), 1914; quoted in Modernism: Designing a New World, 1914-1939, edited by Christopher Wilk, 2006.