Optical Glass House A Building by Hiroshi Nakamura www.archdaily.com Show image 0 Show image 1 A façade of some 6,000 pure-glass blocks (50mm x 235mm x 50mm) was employed. The pure-glass blocks, with their large mass-per-unit area, effectively shut out sound and enable the creation of an open, clearly articulated garden that admits the city scenery. To realize such a façade, glass casting was employed to produce glass of extremely high transparency from borosilicate, the raw material for optical glass. The casting process was exceedingly difficult, for it required both slow cooling to remove residual stress from within the glass, and high dimensional accuracy. Even then, however, the glass retained micro-level surface asperities, but we actively welcomed this effect, for it would produce unexpected optical illusions in the interior space. wabi-sabi
littlebigdetails A Blog by Floris Dekker littlebigdetails.com Little Big Details is a curated collection of the finer details of design. As Charles & Ray Eames put it: “The details are not the details; they make the product.” This is intended to be a source of inspiration. Created and curated by Floris Dekker. Alumni: Andrew McCarthy. Essential vs. nice to have detailsmicrositeswhimsydesign