James Carpenter runs a design firm (James Carpenter Design Associates), in New York that specializes in architectural uses of glass. One of the first Americans to work in the glass industry in Italy, Carpenter worked as a designer for the Venini Company in Murano in the early 1970s. He is a pioneer in discovering and designing architectural applications for glass. During his weekly commutes to MIT from New York, Carpenter worked with Michael Cima and graduate students in the Ceramics Processing Lab to develop a non-yellowing polymer that could be used to sleeve long cylinders of borosilicate glass such that they might be used safely as struts in load-bearing situations.
Carpenter gave a fine talk entitled “The Structure of Transparency”, on the development of his work from gallery-based to site-specific to architectural in nature.