Advances in glass technologies are being applied in contemporary interior architecture. Glass forms and surfaces are appearing in settings and applications that offer vivid aesthetic experiences for users, but create ambiguous messages concerning community and privacy. Where a modernist application of glass may have been directed toward creating a continuity of space, unbounded by material interruption, contemporary applications of glass in interior environments often create an ambiguity of space, community, and privacy. Such an ambiguity establishes the potential for a rich aesthetic engagement and simultaneously an unnerving level of social discomfort. This paper will explore virtues and drawbacks of glass applications in contemporary interior architecture in terms of aesthetic response, and that response in relation to issues of community and privacy.