Ribbon Windows: Openness, Privacy and Cool, Modern Design

In the 1920s architect Le Corbusier developed what would become known as The Five Points of Modern Architecture: 1) Supports, or pilotis; 2) Roof gardens; 3) Free design of ground plan; 4) Horizontal, or ribbon window, and 5) Free design of the facade.

These interrelated design considerations were responses to industrialization, the use of reinforced concrete and making a break with traditional buildings and are most evident in the architect's famous Villa Savoye outside Paris.

Of interest here is point number 4, the ribbon windows that are an expression of the facade being hung from the structural frame. This was a break from load-bearing exterior walls that were together structure and facade.

Because these long horizontal windows were impossible with traditional heavy enclosures, they became emblematic of a new direction in architecture. So then it was up to Le Corbusier and his followers to explore how ribbon windows function, besides as a polemical statement for modern architecture.

Decades later, ribbon windows are a fairly common element in modern and contemporary houses. To be considered as extensions of Le Corbusier's treatise, the windows should be part of a flat facade, an opening within a larger wall (not above it, as in a clerestory).

The examples that follow can be seen as neo-Corbusian, but some have divergent styles that still incorporate ribbon windows in some manner.