Oct 30, 2008
On the Market: People in Glass Houses—Northfield
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The glass shell of the house, above, shows off the billowy landscape that Roszak designed. List Price: $3.995 million
The Property: A contemporary architectural landmark, this all-glass house in Northfield—the 2002 design of and the current home of the architect Tom Roszak—won national recognition from the American Institute of Architects in 2007 and Architectural Digest in 2005. Roszak, an avowed modernist who has built several glassy condo projects in downtown Chicago and Evanston, designed this house as a sort of prototype for an idea he had. As Roszak envisioned it, a young couple could build a few connected glass cubes—for the kitchen, the living room, and the bedroom—and then add more cubes as their family and budget grew.
Roszak built this house—12 cubes, six on each of two floors—all at once. The living room is two stories (or two cubes) high, with an office loft projecting over it. All the exterior walls in each of the above-ground rooms are made of glass; large panels of remote-controlled blinds can black out a room if needed, but for the most part, the interior stays open and connected to the surrounding landscape.
In fact, Roszak used the landscape as a “privacy wall” out front. He placed a row of densely branching birches close to the front of the house, so that from the street, all that is visible at the end of the driveway are the trees, albeit with some of the house peeking through. The only wall not made of glass is a central interior wall of concrete that creates a semblance of privacy for the family-oriented rooms in the back half of the house by preventing see-through from the driveway. And as you will see in the video tour, the yellow steel support beams that are visible throughout the house look especially vibrant now, complemented by the fall colors right outside the windows.
Roszak and his wife, Justyna, collaborated on many aspects of the design of the five-bedroom house. They also filled it with three kids, which meant they had to surrender the stunning second-floor glass-box yoga studio that I envied when Roszak first showed me around the house in 2002. The couple now perform their yoga routines in one of the house’s broad, sunlit hallways—and it must feel as if they are doing their sun salutations out in the open air.
The house has a dramatic profile, but that doesn’t mean it’s not livable. The kitchen is a warm, inviting place, with all its cabinetry “floating” detached from any walls. Next door is the children’s playroom, which, with only the glass walls separating it from the billowy landscape that Roszak designed, feels like a gigantic aquarium for kids.
Price Points: Roszak says his plan was always to build a new experimental house every five or six years. The condo business and the kids delayed moving on from this one, but upon selling it, he says, he wants to build something far more ecologically advanced, using building techniques and materials that were not available when he built this one.
Listing Agent: Steve Hudson, the Hudson Co., 847-446-9600; steve@thehudsoncompany.com
Posted at 09:02 AM in On the Market | Permalink
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Reader Comments:
The buyer will need a lot of Windex!
Leslie
LoveHouse
I am an architect, a builder and a developer. When I designed and built my house, the GlassHouse, in 2002, one of my childhood dreams came true. When I was a kid, I always said I would build a “green” house, and this was before any real environmental inklings existed about housing, it was strictly a house in the color of green, my favorite color. And I think I said it was to have all the gadgets that the Jetson’s house had…that was back when I was about 10 years old.
After graduating from IIT’s School of Architecture in 1989, I worked for David Hovey and got a first hand look at two of his own ultra-contemporary homes; first on Elm Street and then helping build his 2nd house on the lake. I learned about Mies’ Wolf house. I visited Mies’ Barcelona Pavilion and Farnsworth house. I met Michael and Patty Hopkins personally and visited their fantastic home many times. I love Richard Roger’s Zip House; Norman Foster’s personal un-built residence; all of Richard Meier’s homes (many I visited); and also Richard Horden’s and Tadao Ando’s work (my wife and I visited 10 Ando buildings in one day thanks to the Shinkansen and eager cabbies). There is a lineage of these “modern” homes that stretches from the 1920’s and continues to today. We are all constantly dreaming of dwellings and how we’d like to live, not only me or these and other architects mentioned here, but also everyone. Humans have been doing this “dreaming” since caves and huts were first used and invented. Provide shelter, security and foster growth…that’s what a house is for. Technology in homes has always been the most advanced it possibly it could be at any time (cavemen included). This quest for advancing the house concept seems to have stalled (today) except for an elite group of modernists. We need to continue to dream and push technology so everyone can have shelter, security and foster growth, but in a way that expresses our epoch. What does the house of tomorrow look like?
We are selling the GlassHouse. The house is perfect and has been a pleasure to live in. It looks smart and modern and acts smart and modern. It is a piece of art as much as it is real estate. My wife and I will design and build a new house. We want to stay in Northfield, because we love the area so much. We will build an environmentally effective house, using technology and concepts I have been studying recently. We will utilize geo-thermal, solar panels and other energy concepts to make a zero-energy house; the idea is to produce more energy that we use and sell the extra energy back to the grid. Every house will be doing this in 10-25 years. I want to be a leader in environmental design and show people “which way is forward”. We will utilize recycled materials like reclaimed wood and the sides of shipping containers (I’d also love to incorporate airplane wings, if my wife Justyna lets me). The idea is to build a new house every 7-10 years or so. Each one is an experiment and a physical expression of what I am interested in and want to learn about. I have a team of engineers and consultants who will help me makes this new house the most advanced it can be. We will publish a book on the new house just like we did for the GlassHouse.
We hope to sell the GlassHouse by end of 2009 and move into the new house by end of 2010. We hope to find another great one-acre lot in Northfield.
The new house will be called the LoveHouse…love of family and love of the environment. The new house will accommodate everything my family and I want and need in an environmentally friendly way. We will embrace each other and the earth too. We all must.
I am so proud that the GlassHouse won the 2008 American Institute of Architects Interior Architecture award. With this award it is a perfect time to sell the house and let the new owner enjoy it in all of its glory.
My original GreenHouse idea became in reality the built GlassHouse, and now I am dreaming about the LoveHouse.
Thomas Roszak