What if your home had no walls? In 1949 American architect, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, built this, the Farnsworth House, just south-west of Chicago.
For many it is the high point of the Modernist Movement in architecture – here’s historian Maritz Vandenburg:
“Every physical element has been distilled to its irreducible essence. The interior is unprecedentedly transparent to the surrounding site, and also unprecedentedly uncluttered in itself. All of the paraphernalia of traditional living –rooms, walls, doors, interior trim, loose furniture, pictures on walls, even personal possessions – have been virtually abolished in a puritanical vision of simplified, transcendental existence. Mies had finally achieved a goal towards which he had been feeling his way for three decades.”
How would you feel living in a glass house? It’s a lovely idea to be so immersed in a natural setting but I wonder if I would feel a bit exposed and insecure, not to mention the lack of personal belongings.
Here are some other glass houses for you to consider:
this is by Philip Johnson – who worked as an apprentice to Mies – very lovely but I would be wondering who was peeping at me with my lights on.
And this one makes me shiver for a different reason – it’s by Santambrogia Milano and is in Italy.
At least there a couple of panels to hide behind in this elegant Watervilla in Kortenhoet, the Netherlands. The house looks like a it is floating on the river.
Mind you, I must admit to having long held a fantasy about living in an abandoned green house – something like this perhaps?
And I also have to say that this house looks absolutely amazing – it’s by Santambrogio Milano. So, now you know who to commission your next glass house from – once you have acquired a stunning setting that is.
