Glass Blowing

Around 200 BC Syrian craftsmen discovered that they could blow thin-walled vessels of glass from a hollow iron pipe. A simple yet miraculous tool that has served us profoundly and continuously, the blowpipe has been adapted to various scales but changed very little. In making a glass architecture in situ, blowing will be the tool that delicately draws walls, columns and domes up from the molten ground line

 
Opening reheating Spinning
(Diderot, Encyclopedie, 1762-1777: 13 - 14)
 
The sequence of cranes shown above carry out the traditional operations of glass blowing at a larger scale and on site. A cavern is melted within the earth, the caverns are used as crucibles for glass blowing, in this case dish like roof canopy elements are spun out like plates and set on top of hollow glass columns to collect rain water in the cisterns below.
 
Thin single or double walled( with insulating air space), shell structures could be blown in one generous breath, from molten foundations in a matter of minutes.