The Glass Video Gallery was commissioned by the city of Groningen and the Groningen Museum as a public pavilion for watching music videos. It is at the centre of a traffic roundabout. Within the glass volume are six banks of video monitors. Tschumi's pellucid structure signifies the immaterial nature of video images as flickering patterns of coloured light projected onto a glass screen.
The elements of its architecture comprise of toughened glass plates held by metal clips. The barrier between the inside and outside has been minimised and thus enhanced the message of information bursting out of the built form. Compared to a cinema that has a single window looking outside, this idea is further multiplied by the multiple reflections in the glass planes.
The lucid and rational function of glass as a building material is ultimately denied by moving the gallery out of the cartesian grid in which it would otherwise seem to belong and tilting it on two axes.
The glass volume of the gallery, the glass-screened video monitors and video's function as in instrument of surveillance are all inverted. The anonymous subjectivity of the visitor is rejected, instead, the signified becomes also the signifier. The spectator becomes the subject.
The feasibility of private life in a media-suffused culture is being questioned. At night, the architectural volume disappears and cyberspace thus flows out into the surrounding that can be seen from reflections picked up by shiny surfaces round.
By using multi windows and multi channels in cyberspace, the viewing of MTVs is changed. Architectural elements that use transparent material like glass instead of solid walls. It allows the viewer to choose and switch from one channel to the other.
The idea of universal accessibility in cyberspace is demonstrated. In the night, the idea together with the sense of placelessness is being emphasised by the sensuous floating TV screens.
The focus of the public towards cyberspace is translated into the location, which is at the centre of a roundabout, enhancing the idea of importance and significance.
By the use of materials and the layout of the elements, light from the TV monitors shines out of the built form and is reflected onto the surrounding. This is even more so at night. Thus, there is interaction between the internal and the external, and an integration of the two by multiple reflections, reflections of both internal and external surfaces superimposed and reflected by another piece of glass, echoing the success of the Internet that is about interaction.