Hasta La Ideas

This glass house by Belgian architects Govaert & Vanhoutte has a 50-metre-long wall at the back and a sunken swimming pool at the front.

Located in one of the forests surrounding Bruges, the house is long and narrow and contains staggered storeys that descend below the ground.

The swimming pool is located at the lowest level and is tucked into a recessed corner of the building.

Doors leading into the house are as high as the walls and are difficult to spot when closed.

Inside, a long ramp slopes up from the main living and dining room towards children’s bedrooms that are half a storey above, while cantilevered stairs lead down into a second living room and master bedroom.

Another ramp outside the building provides access to a car park below.

We’ve featured a few houses in the past that are almost entirely glazed. See one in Germany here and one in Sweden here.

Photography is by Tim Van de Velde.

Here’s a little more information from Govaert & Vanhoutte:

Villa Roces

Villa Roces is integrated in an oblong terrain of about 70m long and 30m wide, situated in the forest surroundings of Bruges.

The concept consists of a 50 m long and a 4.20 m high wooden wall flanking 6 m wide glass box is disposed.

The house is built along a wall with the intention to meet the lack of light and reflect the presence of the forest, the verticality of the trees, etc.

The 54m long wall functions as a background for the transparant volume in front.

The wall is not only visible at the outside, but also continuously visible at the inside.

As the transparent volume is conceived as a box, the inside space is filled in with clearly defined boxes and volumes and incorporate the structural elements.

The glass box is indented at three sides:

• One to give access to the underground parking place
• One to develop the half underground swimming pool
• And one to give access, at the backside of the house, to the master bedroom and annex bathroom

The plan concept is very simple:

1. On the level of the garden there is the income, kitchen, dining room and fireplace situated. The kitchen can be separated from dining room with a big sliding door.

2. The bedroom section of the children and the master bedroom are situated one above the other and put in split-level with the living room which has one and a half height

3. In front of the master bedroom we have a secondary sitting room which spatial makes the conversion to the handled levels.

4. A slope guarantuees the connection between the living room and the bedroom section of the children.

5. By handling the explained levels and heights we could maintain a continuously horizontal box which was of main importance to be put in contrast to the verticality of the trees.

6. Under the living room and kitchen is the underground parking situated. To put this underground was also of main importance in order to reduce the build volume above the ground level, this in relation to the disposable space and give the house the visual impression of a big pavilion.

Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka will present a table that’s almost invisible at the Salone Internazionale del Mobile in Milan next week.

Called Luminous, the solid glass table was designed for Italian brand Glas Italia.

Yoshioka specialises in transparent, barely-there design: see all our stories about his work here.

The Salone Internazionale del Mobile takes place from 17 to 22 April. See all our stories about Milan 2012 here.

Here’s some more information from Tokujin Yoshioka:

Glas Italia Luminous designed by Tokujin Yoshioka

In 2012, “LUMINOUS” will be presented at Glas Italia in Milan Salone del Mobile 2012.

Glas Italia is an Italian manufacturer of glass furniture who has a long history and tradition, and it is a first collaboration between GLAS ITALIA and Tokujin Yoshioka. “LUMINOUS” is the transparent glass table completed by the solid glass structure.

This table, given its birth by light itself, is as if it is freed from the material world, obtaining its appearance by the refraction of light and emits a mysterious presence.

Glas Italia: Hall 20 – Stand C 12

Retour sur cette réalisation de Rimantas Lukavicius à l’occasion du Eyeka Contest pour ce film promotionnel non-officiel pour Coca-Cola. Un travail avec le studio Korb en détournant les codes de la bouteille de la marque, cette vidéo est à découvrir dans la suite de l’article.

Previously on Fubiz

• Coca Cola – The Bottle
• You Took My Name
• Coca Cola Bottle – Mystic

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Slideshow: this glass pavilion on the edge of a lake in Ontario, Canada, houses a studio, apartment and boathouse for a photographer and was designed by Toronto Studio gh3.

A dark granite plinth supports the glazed upper walls of the building, spanning the height between ground level and the water’s edge.

Boats are stored inside this supporting structure, while the studio and residence are located on the upper floor and mezzanine above.

During warmer weather the glazed walls of the building can slide open for ventilation, while more sliding walls provide separation inside the house between the studio and en suite bedroom.

You can see more projects in Canada here, including a group of plywood skating shelters.

Photography is by Larry Williams.

The text below is from gh3:

Photographer’s Studio over a boat house on Stoney Lake is a reimagination of the archetypal glass house in a landscape.

A continuation of thinking about this architectural ambition, the central conceit of the glass house is reconceived through a contemporary lens of sustainability, program, site and amenity.

The compelling qualities of simple, open spaces; interior and exterior unity; and material clarity are transformed to enhance the environmental and programmatic performance of the building, creating an architecture of both iconic resonance and innovative context–driven design.

The program envisions a building as north–facing window: a photographer’s live/work studio that is continuously bathed in diffuse and undiminished natural light.

The transparent facade—a continuous curtain wall glazed in Cradle to Cradle–certified Starphire glass—becomes the essential element in a photographic apparatus to produce images unobtainable in a conventional studio.

The availability and fidelity of north–facing light in the double-height space provide the photographer with unparalleled natural illumination, while the clarity of the glazing transforms the site and surrounding vistas into a sublime, ever–changing backdrop.

The compact glass form sits at the water’s edge on a granite plinth whose matte black facade dematerializes to suspend the building, lantern-like, on the site.

The granite’s thermal mass exploits the abundant solar input, eliminating the need for active systems on winter days, while the lakefront site allows the use of a deep-water exchange to heat and cool the building year–round through radiant slabs and recessed perimeter louvers at the floor and ceiling.

Sliding panes in the glass skin—three metres wide at the ground floor, and one and a half metres wide on the mezzanine floor—allow the facade become completely porous for natural ventilation, while an individually automated blind system, white roof, and deciduous hedgerow guard against excessive solar gain.

The continuous blind system additionally serves as a second aesthetic skin, transforming the interior into an enclosed, intimate space, and the exterior into a gently reflective mirror of the surroundings.

Entry into the site is facilitated through a minimalist landscape that deploys endogenous materials while leaving the greatest portion of the site in its evocative, glacier-scoured state.

A simple granite plinth serves as threshold for the south-facing entrance, where solid program functions and vertical circulation are arranged in a narrow, efficient volume.

From the outset, the goal was too accommodate the clients programme within a small footprint, so domestic functions are integrated into a furniture-like mezzanine assembly suspended above the main space, where bedroom, bathroom and closet are coextensive, and sliding fritted glass allows the whole to be concealed from the rest of the space.

Throughout the upper and lower levels, interior partitions are clad with seamless white lacquered panels whose reflective qualities diffuse light into every part of the interior and create complex layered views through the space.

Interesting works by Tokujin Yoshioka and Blanc Bijou at Maison et Objet

The artistic work of Japanese designer Tokujin Yoshioka and Japanese brand Blanc Bijou were on show at Maison et Objet, illustrating two aspects of the innovative potential of crystal.

Elected designer of the year at the show, Yoshioka’s experience with glass tells a long story, from the benches he recently created for the Parisian Musée d’Orsay to his collaborations with Swarovsky, Issey Miyake, Hermès and Cartier.

He presented pieces from his “Crystallized Project” at Maison et Objet. For Yoshioka, crystals demonstrate nature’s power to produce spontaneous forms that transcend human aesthetics—a phenomenon he qualifies as “unintentional beauty”. The cost of such a spectacular occurrence, according to the designer, lies in the challenge of working with such naturally hazardous construction.

Crystal cannot be molded, but in this instance, the artist manipulated the medium to grow directly on canvas, manually shaping the forms as much as possible. The series presented at the show grows on the vibrations on the music by Frederic Chopin.

Looking for a material that could express the essence of light, the designer was fascinated by crystal’s peculiar ability to morph from total transparency—the mineral is invisible when dipped in water—to shining with hundreds of reflections when carved.

The Japanese company Blanc Bijou showed a stunning range of industrial applications to a rare natural crystal called fluorite. The whole process to obtain the purely white material—also called “Blanc Bijou”—was exhibited at Maison et Objet, from the extraction of powder from the fluorite to finished fired results.

The stability of the molecular structure created offers certain exclusive aesthetic qualities, like a whiteness that never diminishes with time or sunlight and a smooth softness for home use. At the same time, its properties give it a high resistance to heat, chemical treatments and adhesion for use in advanced chemical industries, robotics and medicine.