The Glass House | Cracknell & Lonergan Architects

Completed in 1957, the Glass House was the first Lucas family home. It was not a picturesque cottage in the woods, nor was it cosy, but it nevertheless captured the essence of a home. What it lacks in substance it more than makes up for in gravitas. With its feather weight structure, it floats miraculously about the tree canopy, above the rocks, and above torrents. We sought only to conserve.

It has all the rooms that a house requires. It also has a courtyard, a verandah, clothes lines, a garden, and the setting that single family homes expect. But it has one other thing that so many of today’s houses lack: it has an idea, and that idea is economy.