History of Windows and Doors

Small openings that allowed air to circulate in the morning and cooled the building in the evening. Although they already worked with glass, the ancient Egyptians had not yet managed to produce 1-centimeter-thick panes.

It was the Romans, as evidenced by the excavations at Pompeii, who produced them using the casting method and installed them in multi-leaf windows with painted wooden frames. Even at that time, the architect Marcus Vitruvius had raised the issue of lighting in his De Architectura, considering the orientation of natural light in the design of a building. But when the Roman Empire fell and the Middle Ages came to the fore in history, designing any type of building became solely a matter of defense and protection.

From noble castles to clergy churches, from peasant houses to feudal palaces, all buildings overlooked the street through high, thick walls with small openings framed by inward-curving fixtures. These served to monitor movements outside to prevent possible enemy attacks and to provide space for positioning spears and arrows.

Having crossed the threshold of the millennium in the history of window frames, man discovered the decorative and iconographic potential of Gothic-style windows with rose windows and mullioned windows, supported by lead wires and installed on the facades of churches, abbeys, and cathedrals. It was then the Renaissance that gave windows the function of providing a view to appreciate all the beauty that the world had to offer outside. Architects proposed them in their designs as a distinctive and classy aesthetic element, given that at that time some European countries, such as France and England, considered them a sign of wealth and applied a tax on windows to their owners.

It was not until the Baroque period that they became the predominant architectural element of the façade. Rectangular, square, circular, or ovoid, arched or round-arched, lowered or gabled, the fixtures enhance the shape given by the design and are distinguished by the finishes that Italian craftsmen expressed with the development of new woodworking techniques. It took the industrial revolution in the second half of the 19th century, with the discovery of new materials such as steel and reinforced concrete, to give windows a complementary role in the design of façades, highlighting the architecture of buildings.

Thus, in the 20th century, the window frame expanded to become the entire wall of the façade, now free from perimeter walls because they were replaced by Le Corbusier's structural glazing, a veritable window open to the world.