Glass House

A residence that dissolves the boundary between interior and exterior. Floor-to-ceiling glass walls on all four sides open to a courtyard garden, so the house feels less like a building and more like a clearing in the landscape.

The structural system is reduced to the minimum — a slender steel frame with cruciform columns at 6-metre intervals. There are no load-bearing walls. Interior partitions stop short of the ceiling and are clad in oiled walnut, so they read as furniture rather than architecture. The open plan can be reconfigured with sliding screens.

Triple-glazed units with a low-e coating and argon fill keep the thermal envelope tight despite the extreme glass-to-wall ratio. In summer, automated exterior blinds deploy when surface temperatures exceed 28 degrees. A ground-source heat pump handles what the passive measures cannot. Annual energy consumption is 42 kWh per square metre — well below code for a house of this size.

The courtyard garden was planted with species that change dramatically across the year — ornamental grasses in summer, bare branches with frost patterns in winter. Living in this house means living inside the weather. Every room has a different relationship to the sky.