Glass\Box

Having grown up in the farmlands and woodlands of Central Jersey, I was surrounded by fields, meadows, forests, and abandoned decaying structures. The images of former farm buildings standing vacant and persisting against the weathering of time dance in my dreams like fireflies on a summer night as a child. Since moving to the Boston area in 2020, the escapades to these places are limited to the few times a year I go home to visit my family for holidays and such.

In recent years, my parents have begun actively considering their upcoming retirement and are looking to move northward to Western Massachusetts to be closer to myself and one of my siblings. Once or twice a year they will come up and find a place to stay in or near a town they are considering moving to. Each time they come north, I make time to drive out west and visit them. And each time I find myself driving through places that remind me of home. Like a scent that brings you back to your childhood, fields with an unused structure from when nowhere was somewhere pass through my periphery. Small towns oscillate with farms in a patchwork of rural beauty.

Re-Found

This romanticism is where the heart of the idea for Glass\Box stem from. What if we instead of letting a former farm structure decay in a field, we instead honor it by giving it a new sense of purpose? How do we honor a structure that is found and whom we have no direct ties to? What does it ask of us, require of us as occupants for it to be able to serve us as shelter in return?

Through systematic surgical openings and reinforcing of the existing structure, a sense of honor is given to the grandiosity of the structure. By attaching a greenhouse to the front of it, it now not only has a renewed purpose in life, but it’s need to be served and cared for is in return cemented. The design of this home demands the occupants take care of it for it to provide a proper home that takes care of them.

Upon entering the site, you enter into the meadow, a remnant of the farmland that used to surround this hypothetical structure. As you approach the house, you become an active participant in the future forest that you are now a habitant of. Upon entering the home, you’re surrounded by the greenhouse, a visual extension of the outside meadow that you must actively work to keep up. In it plants like Lavendar, Mint, Sage, Rosemary, Chamomile are produced for use throughout the house and day-to-day life of the inhabitants. Native grasses, wildflowers, Beech and Yellowwood trees help to balance out the ecosystem and provide shade for the spaces inside the home.

The first floor contains an open and flowing Kitchen, Dining Room, and Living Room. The large opening cut between the Greenhouse and the Interior is reflected by a large curtainwall that flanks the northern façade of the building. A large bench dining table is placed front a center in the opening to connect the act of eating with the act of producing in the greenhouse and visual change of seasons in the exterior. The second floor is designed as an office/studio/workspace for the occupants. Whether working on art and designs, needing a place to listen to music and reflect, or reading and research, the open desk spaces and lounge area are the vertical center of the home. Finally on the top floor, bedrooms are given an open hallway to the top of the greenhouse and windows that look out to the vast surroundings of the ecosystem. Visual connectedness to the surrounding environment is a constant throughout so as to enshrine the building in place and the occupants as stewards to the home the structure provides and the life the ecosystem thrives on.