C-Glass House

Mon Sep 12, 2016HousesUnited States2014Functionalism

C-Glass House

Deegan Day Design

ARCHITECTS
Deegan Day Design

CONSTRUCTION TEAM
Morita Construction

PAINTING
Decarli Painting, Rich

MANUFACTURERS
Bendheim, Fleetwood, Kawneer, Lamberts, Durocit

PAINTING
Decarli Painting, Rich Decarli

CONSTRUCTION TEAM
Morita Construction

ROOF SAFETY ACCESS
Henris Roofing, Steve Henris

EXECUTIVE ARCHITECT
Dave Maynard Architecture

GENERAL CONTRACTOR
Ken Morita, Matt Curley

DRYWALL
Tsarnas Drywall, John Tsarnas

PROJECT ENGINEER
Greg Marin

GRADING AND SEPTIC
Furlong Brothers, Kevin Furlong

STRUCTURAL STEEL
Banks Welding, Doug Banks

ROOFING
Henris Roofing, Steve Henris

PLUMBING
Basil Scott, Scott's Plumbing

ELECTRICAL
Sherlock Electric, Tom Sherlock

SHOWER DOORS ARCH'S GLASS
Rick Stewart

DESIGN TEAM
Joe Day, Taiyo Watanabe, Yo Oshima, Noel Williams, Sonali Patel, Mark Lyons,
Bonnie Solmssen, Felicia Martin, Garo Hachigian

RADIANT HEAT
Warm Zone

PHOTOGRAPHS
Taiyo Watanabe

AREA
2100 ft²

YEAR
2014

LOCATION
Dillon Beach, United States

CATEGORY
Houses

Text description provided by architect.

Set on a remote site with sweeping coastal views, C-Glass House poses an abstract counterpoint to its daunting natural surroundings.

Designed for a client who once helped Phillip Johnson mount a Mies van der Rohe retrospective at MoMA, the project is an exercise in high-performance transparency - a home of maximal exposure with minimal environmental impact.

The C-Glass House is a 2100sf retreat in northern California. Set on a spectacular but periodically wind-swept site, the C-Glass House opens to a panoramic view of Tomales Bay and the open ocean, while bracing against winds that approach 100mph from multiple directions.

The design engages not only Philip Johnson’s Glass House and the Farnsworth House by Mies van der Rohe (the client helped translate texts for Mies’ 1972 retrospective at MoMA), but also the California legacies of Elwood, Koenig and others.

In contrast to earlier ‘vitrines in a garden,’ west coast glass houses bias towards the environment, employing tactics of framing, cantilever and directional enclosure to heighten, as well as quantify, the beauty of their surroundings.

C-Glass House brokers between the Leica-like precision of high modern glass houses and the cinematic wideframe of the Case Study generation.

Though its architectural lineage is self-evident, this glass house is as indebted to artists’ explorations of glazed enclosures as it is to the precedents of Johnson and Mies.

Larry Bell’s elevated cubes and Dan Graham’s many pavilions capitalize more on the reflective and refractive ambiguities of the medium than its transparency, as do mirrored works by Gerhard Richter and the aquarium-like cages of Damien Hirst.

The C-Glass House bridged between these ambitions in a new way, opening up to a panoramic vista but also modulating and reflecting back on architecture’s evolving role in the American landscape.