Comfort, class and climate change: The rise of glass in late medieval and early modern domestic architecture

In the modern world, glass windows are considered an indispensable element of the built environment. Throughout premodern times, however, glass was not universally used in European architecture. This article argues that the rise of glass in Western architecture was neither an inevitable nor a linear process, but rather a response to certain social, cultural and environmental factors that gained increasing relevance from the late medieval period onwards. In other words, glass windows are a cultural convention, reflecting some of the widerangingandtransformativechallengesthatEuropeansfacedinthelate medieval and early modern period.