GLASS HOUSE

The glasshouse - is designed to accommodate a family 2+2 (2 children and parents).
The design also provides a room for visitors and relatives, who can pay a visit from time to time.
The house is designed as an open plan space with the core inside, which provides users with toilets and bathrooms as well as vertical communication.
The open plan is divided by light partitions, which allow the occupants of the house to easily change the layout of the floor plan during the occupation period.
The house provides 1+1working spaces:
- First, next to the parents bedroom (first floor)
- Second, is the reception room, which can be converted into the home office-space accessible directly from the street.
The skeleton structure of the house allows for a lift for disabled people, which can be provided to link the first and second floor in case a member of the family becomes disabled during their occupation.
The design - House shape is designed to minimise the external surface of the house.
" A sphere has 25% less area then a cube of the same volume. Working towards a green building is to minimise heat loss and heat gain by reducing the external surface of the building."
To minimise heat gain of the design, the house is located on the plot in such a way that the smallest possible surface of the design faces south.
The trees are planted on the southwest side of the plot to protect the house from the sun. During the summertime the leaves will screen the house from the sun and during the wintertime lack of leaves will allow the house to gain energy from the sun.
Double high space of the living room is designed to accumulate the heat during the day and then during the night the heat can be distributed into the bedrooms. The louvers are designed to provide additional control of the sun penetration of the building, as well as providing an additional envelope when closed and at the same time creating privacy and a thermal barrier.
The structure - main structure of the house is made of laminated timber beams, supported externally by curved laminated timber columns and internally by a timber skeleton, which forms the core of the house. The core is designed to accommodate vertical installations such as chimneys, ventilation, pipe work, electrical risers, etc. The core also encloses very private functions of the house such as W.C. and bathrooms. The floor plate and the roof are supported by the beams and give the stiffness to the structure. Each room is enclosed from the open space by light partitions (glass or plasterboard).
The external envelope of the house is designed as a two layers system:
- The first layer is created by Pilkington INSULIGHT units supported from timber
columns to provide the occupants with thermal and atmospheric protection.
- The second layer is created by the louvers, to provide occupants with additional thermal insulation as well as privacy when the louvers are closed.