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Dream House of Stacked Glass

 

This past week, I happened upon a gem while perusing an architecture blog. An old dairy building in Somerset, England was transformed into the stunning five-bedroom house pictured here, using stacked glass blocks and oak planks. The project is already six years old (it was finished in 2008); but in my humble opinion, its appeal is timeless.

The “Dairy House,” as architect Charlotte Skene Catling (Skene Catling de la Peña Architects) refers to it, was a private residential commission. The design inspiration came from a stack of timber sitting in the yard near the original building. In order to dry freshly cut wood, foresters place small separators between the planks to keep air circulating. The architects took this image and translated it into an elegant system of stacked glass from Pilkington layered with wood. (Interestingly, Pilkington apparently donated the glass, as this technique had never been done and otherwise would have been unaffordable.)

On the outside of the house, the wood and glass were left rough; inside, they were sanded and polished. Conceptually, this gives the exterior a sense of “camouflage” in its rural surroundings, while the interior opens to reveal an unexpectedly modern, luxurious, inviting spaciousness.

 

All images via Stylepark

 

For whatever it’s worth, Skene Catling de la Peña notes that additional inspiration was gleaned from Jean-Francois de Bastide’s The Little House: An Architectural Seduction, an architectural treatise and erotic novella published in 1879, which is somewhat of a cult classic among architects. Mind you, the specifics of this “literary” inspiration are not detailed on the project site!

What is detailed, however, is the dazzling effect of the stacked glass:

Layered oak and laminated float glass produce an eerie, filtered light. The dematerialising effect of refraction and reflection create an aquatic underworld. The way the light moves around the house over the course of the day draws the user through it. In the morning low light floods the east with the glass acting as a prism that projects watery green lozenges over floors and walls. By midday, the sun is overhead, streaming through the roof light slot and penetrating the two-way mirror bridge giving views from the ground floor through the building. At night this is reversed, and the flames in the fireplace are visible through the floor of the landing.

 

 

It’s too bad this space isn’t open to visitors; I’d love to see it in person. But then again, of course, its privacy is part of its appeal.