50 Great Products for Kitchens & Baths k Sexy New Furniture from Milan \ sep tit wie Brite BYHOW WE LIVE = Free and © 3) GLASS HOUSES SOFTEN THE EDGE BETWEEN THE ORGANIC AND MAN- MADE, TURNING US INTO NATURE-LOVING MYSTICS. BY KARRIE JACOBS | cen bow sesheped mod hai send onsite bled phere tno: ting tc hs arpa vale Toul atch hears goa ce bier tect lela ont vero aoa pony ota ghee ay coms Os ee eraqieia cto Uvourupat aren i: dering why the sua was out. Gradually came ro ize that the brilliant white glow flooding the house ‘vas moonlight, Stil, was a lcele spooked, because ‘the moon's unusual intensity made me feel 3s chough T were sleeping snugly nat indoors bur somewhere ‘out in the wild. Forall the obvious reasons, true glass houses, transparent all the way around, are relatively rare. ut now that glass has been reengineered into x high- performance grcen building material, we'll surely hye sing more of them, ist rake alook at Werner Sobek’s Rea8 House (page 72) in Stuttgart, Germany. esa gleaming, vlera-fficien, sustainable, recyclable, triple-plazed ice cube of house, Today, as architects wht design skyscrapers well know; stunningly clear lass can fier out the suas heat, an glass sand- ‘wiches with at or argon in the micidle can effectively insulate, And with the addition of photovoltaic technology glass curtain walls ean generate electtic- iny,too, Te makes perfect vense. Buc chen, the appeal of the glass house has never exactly been rational. In fact, fd prefer to think gass houses are pretty spe~ cifically designed to failtate those 4 4.m. encounters with the cosmos. T don’ think I flly gesped this until arecent visit to Philip Johnson's 1949 Glass House in New{MORE] Canaan, Connecticut, The architect died in 2005 at -acre estate, dotted with archi- nv administered by che National Trust for Historic Preservation. I've never age 98, and his tecrural experiments, is been much of Johnson fins his ofice rowers and public buildings have always left me cold. But when T stepped into his Glass House for the first time, [ell in love, Is all the things T never thought of Johnson as being: simple, modest, understated. Tris ost 1.728 square Feet of open space only the bathroom is enclosed) —epic sheets of glass mounted in steel frames, What T found fascinating was the ‘way Johnson carefully groomed the surrounding woods and fields and installed loodlights so that the landscape would be luminaced ac night. And in this A: es om has leer cad wa flrs collection of sixteen by innovative architects that fh Ward, an impoverished and long-troubled neighborhood What Bel called for was a 900-squire-fo0t, (W: bedroom, ewo-bath house clad entirely in glass. saw ie at.a1999 exhibition at the Muscam of Modern Arr, ‘were supposed to be built in Houston's “The Un-Private House,” and iewas the one plan [found hengingon the museum's walls that I desperately wanted to see realized. For one ching, 1 admired the audacity of plinting s house so open and sovulnerable in a rough urban sesting, And | especialy ap. preciated Bell's invention co kent a glass house together store-bought components ike Fleetwood sliding glass doors, and erect the whole thing for $13,000. Maybe the movtalluring aspect of che house was that it was the only one in MoMA galles- ies that I could deeam ofowning, Certainly T wasn't the only person to thinkso. "When I was ro and Isaw Philip Johnsons Glass House for the first time in Janson History of Art, it ‘was a true aesthetic moment,” recalls Philip Gefter, 1 choughe, That's what I want." Later in life, Geftes, who grew up to be the culrure picrures editor at theRIDE Paras aS overeat easy Be RED Petru) Peed Se oat) era A ane eC Un ASW We Live Ne a acd Presa filmmaker, encountered THE EDGES Balls version on display ar MoMA. fF TN= “And in 2002, when i occurred to us Ws R 1: a Bows. OUR hw oid aed WRENS leper HEARNE UP Cousthurbetl neverbult i” ROC IVER! Operands he elt APALTS “rk Timer, an his pactner, Rich ing that they were abou to build a simple prefab glass house on the 12 acres they'd purchased in the Hudson River Valley, nocth of New York City: However, both clients and architect expected so much. from this particular house that simplicity was never truly an option. For one ching, not only had Bell never buile the Glass Flouse @ » Degrees, held never before buile anything on his owa. And Gefter and Press ‘were very particular. Coincidentally asthe couple embark ‘on their home-building plans, Tress was doing research for a serenplay, one thar traces the troubled history of Ludwig ‘Mies van der Robe and Edith Fiensworth, who arguably was his greatest client and was also umored to be his lover, Naru rally, Gefter and Press made a pilgrimage to the Farnswort House in Plano, Illinois, which inspieed Jolanson’s house but -wasrit completed until ewo years late, in 1951, "L studied architecture at UC Berkeley and I always worshiped the Par sswosth Flouse,” Press explains. "But nothing really prepared sabes and chet Pipa hd was ae ancl Johnson, but they wore also after more esoter qualities, For instance, they wanted the house ro be like one of artist James’ Turtels sculptures, where space is defined only by a diaphanous rectangle of light. “L wanted the enigma ‘of perception,” Getter tells me. So itis no sueprise that the :0-square-foot J-shaped hotse wound up costing far more than Bells Houston budget. For one thing, it was all custom: crafted, Absolutely nothing was off the shel. Bur wound up with was a house that exceeds even the extraor what they narily high expectations ofall concerned. And when any of the three talks about it, he quiekly goes metaphysical. For instance, because the glass walls are suspended beyond the structural frame of the house, and because each sheet of glass is 0 immense, Bell observes, “ta find the edges of the wi: dows, your peripheral vision hat to be quite wide. You end up fecling like you're not inside ata.” And Gefeer has noticed thar, given the way the pieces of the house reflect one another and the susrounding landscape “there are times when it 0 ambiguous that you're not relly sure where you ae.” With his first commission, Fell wound up leaving his dream ‘of che populist glass house behind, Buc other architects have lately been pursuing the notios that the glass house snot ju ‘a gemple for the worship oF high modernism but something that might actually be practica. For example, Linda Taalan[MORE] and Alan Koch, an LA-based husband. ancl-wife architecture team, bai them. selves prororype in the desert near Joshua Tice National Park, using 2 kit of parts that inclucles an easily assembled Rexroth aluminum frame, glass walls fabricated by the Metal Windaw Corporation and a roof made from a type of steel decking ‘customarily used asthe structural floor in skyscrapers. They plan to sll an afford able kit version of their house and ace also ‘working with a developer ona high-end siodel. What the Taalman-Kach approach als to the formula is bold graphies. Koch says they have artists exeate “outfits” for the glass walls ro make them less “sterile.” The colorful parterns are decorative, of course, bur they also coneribute shade and aie of privacy. nd, predictably, when Koch relates the experience of living ia his high-esert house, he tells me that lass walls offer a “new relationship” with nature that transforms even routine chores. Koch tells me abour “sweeping the hhouse in my rowel after takings shower with che doors all open, feling the eaythm ‘of the breeze.” In this respect, he doesnt sound so very differene from Bell, who got tospend one night alone in the Getter Press house, He woke up in the middle of the night and wandered the 135-foot route From Press's sudo, located at one end of the J shape, ta Gefter, at ehe oppes end, “Ta be honest, I was naked and Twas juse walking sound looking a the house You feel like you're outside, bur your Feet are on a warm floor beeause it's radiant heat and you're looking into this forest ‘And this isthe intriguing thing about _lass houses: On one hand, they are the ultimate expression ofthe modernist aes- thetic, building distilled to pure seructure, but on the other, they ean bea surprisingly powerful means to eeconnect tenderfoot ‘urbanites to natuee. For all oF che techao- logical mastery implied hy these cool glass- andemetal boss, forall the high-minded theory they ipiee, people who live in lass houses rend ro goa litle primitive ‘developing analmose mystical connection to the landseape on the other sie of their see-through walls “Oh, yeah, we do that all the time,” Press replies when | inform him of Bells lare-nighe strc. “TU just wake up to get a rink of wateror something. And there’ an animal outside, Or wild turkeys walking across the field. Or the moon's coming in the room. Or the stars, The glass isso tall ‘har when you'e lying in bed, you see the sky. So ie’ like camping ou.” &