Glass-Enclosed Residences｜Custom-built homes by architecture firms6Picks｜The Richness of Light and Transparency

A glass-clad residence is a form of open architectural expression that blurs the boundary between interior and exterior while richly admitting light and views. At the same time, large glazed surfaces must address challenges such as thermal performance, privacy, and summer solar shading. The design office approaches these issues comprehensively—selecting glass types and performance specifications, employing eaves and lattices for solar control, and orienting openings with regard to neighboring sites and streets—to reconcile transparency with comfort. We present homes that integrate the changing qualities of natural light into everyday living.

A residence sited on a terrace extending from the Yamato River floodplain; from the upper level it commands panoramic views over the towns of Ōji and Sangō and the mountain ridge from Mt. Shigi to Mt. Ikoma. The site falls approximately 3.0 m from the center and then steps down a further c. 4.5 m via a retaining wall. Bedrooms and closets are arranged on the lower tier within a high foundation that also functions as earth retention, while the upper tier secures a horizontal plane where the kitchen, stair and wet-service areas are distributed. A large gabled roof admits ventilation and daylight through lateral slits, and the highly ambulatory space beneath the eaves is conceived as the core of daily life, permitting an approach from the parking area. Materiality and chroma are restrained, with finishes executed in a clean, minimal linear manner.

A newly built three-story house for a young, dual-income couple and two children. An eave is projected to the full extent of the site; to avoid diagonal plane restrictions the building volume is partially notched, outdoor air-conditioning units are located on the upper floors, and the area beneath the eaves is opened around the perimeter. The design provides five rooms, generous storage, a built-in garage and an elevator, and incorporates an approach, front garden, circulation corridors, a compact courtyard (tsuboniwa) and bicycle parking. The notches on the second and third floors create gaps that enhance cross-ventilation and mitigate a sense of enclosure. The plan features a longitudinal north–south living/dining/kitchen (LDK) and a south-facing stairwell with a three-story atrium.

This residence was conceived to celebrate the borrowed-scenery of nearby cherry trees. Primary living spaces are located on the second floor; a louvered screen that envelops the living room mitigates external sightlines while elegantly framing the cherry blossom vista. The louvers’ angles have been calibrated to best showcase the blossoms and to provide effective solar shading, creating an interior environment with reduced direct sunlight and enhanced comfort.

This glass house, a steel-wood-glass hybrid structure, is located within a 50 km radius of the city center on an approximately 220-tsubo site (≈727 m²) on the north bank of the Tokigawa River in Saitama Prefecture. It faces directly onto the Tokigawa with the Chichibu mountain range as its backdrop. The second-floor living level is organized as a looped circulation pattern, achieving an integrated thermal environment and daylighting under a single roof. Because the exterior walls have no operable openings, the building is equipped with a ventilation system that employs horizontally projecting, louver-like operable devices cantilevered from the second-floor slab combined with buoyancy-driven (stack) ventilation to exhaust air via a rooftop mechanical ventilator.