Equilibrium
Now that's a house for the man who got nothing to hide. {with a rise of an eyebrow]
MBadgero
Beautiful! You could put up curtains where you wanted modesty. Hopefully, lower priced version will someday become available. Or I might win the lottery.
Robert Silagadze
a Dome House made with same material and components might be much more practical. btw, I couldn't find any on internet..
AINews
I was thinking this would be totally awesome... 'til I thought of washing windows!
wle
looks like a greenhouse could grow tropical crops in it might be a tad too cozy and warm though wle
Daishi
@Robert Silagadze I don't think practical was the intent but a dome would probably be more expensive to make.
At the same time I have heard horror stories about people with glass bathroom sinks being in the other room and having them just explode. It is apparently pretty common and considering the glass would heat up in the sun and get rained on cooling it quickly, heating it to 70+ inside during winter months, and the way ground and materials tends to shift around between seasons (ever notice how sometimes a doorway shifts slightly between seasons?).
You wouldn't want to be under the roof if it smashed and if the glass bowl sinks people are installing today occasionally explode with enough force to send glass out into a hallway you could pretty easily be sacrificing some safety along with your privacy in something like this.
I think it is great art but I would assume you would have a hard time even getting a building permit for one of these things as an actual residence in most of the US at least.
I can't replace my porch without having local and state building permits and having a state inspector approve the footers, design, and materials. You would probably have to outright bribe officials to build something like this or build it in a country that doesn't have many restrictions.
SnoopyDawg
Awesome but soooooo impractical... the moment you introduce a stitch of clothing, or cooking pot or forget about a fridge, it will ruin the view.
I can only see this working on some of the house you need solid walls for many cooking and rudimentary things like washing clothes. but it is cool looking.
On a personal chauvinist pig note: Lets get some NFL cheerleaders in there and we're in business.
ralph.dratman
Fun for a public building. Do glass sinks really explode? I think Corning would have something to say about that. We once visited their Glass Museum -- well worth a trip.
the.other.will
Glass interior & exterior walls are routine in office buildings. Glass roofs are less common, but they appear on entryways & hallways of office & retail buildings as well. The Santambrogio house is unusual but there's nothing that's actually new. In a way, it's partly residential - a showcase for furniture - as well as commercial.
Daishi
@ralph.dratman I've been to the Corning Museum of Glass a couple of times but yeah, the glass bowl sinks have been know to just explode. Search "glass sink bowl explodes" for some of the posts about it. A friend of mine had hers blow up in the middle of the night with nobody near it and it scared the crap out of her.
Here is one of the posts I found online about it but a lot of people have posted the same thing:
"My vessel sink of 2 months exploded this morning, the sink had not been used yet as I had just walked into the bathroom and sat on the toilet, the explosion blew glass all over me and I came off the seat, glass went into the toilet and all over the room.The noise was extremly loud and no warning that something was wrong. The brand was a [removed] and was all tempered glass. The instuctions for installation was followed to a T and was only hand tightened. Nothing dropped on it ever and it was not being used when it happened."
It looks like multiple brands do it.