The other day we threw a question to our Facebook friends – Could you live in a glass house (or do ya throw a lot of stones)? I suppose for me it would depend on the setting. I’d want my glass house to to connect with beautiful views as it blurred the lines between inside and out, but I would not want to live in a fishbowl! Here are some gorgeous glass houses to look at while you ponder this question.

The glass standard is Philip Johnson’s Glass House in New Canaan, Connecticut. I’m so excited that it is now possible to visit – for more information on planning a visit, go to philipjohnsonglasshouse.org.

We spied this amazing house over on Rapson Architects. I’m not sure which I’m more taken with, the house or this amazing photograph with the Rapson chair silhouette drawing the eye at the edge of the deck.

This gorgeous home in Japan caught my eye over on Archlovers.com. It’s called The Optical Glass House and it’s in downtown Hiroshima, Japan. If you do an Google image search of the architect, Hiroshi Nakamura, prepare for your mind to be blown.

This home by Ohlhausen DuBois Architects in Santa Fe fights the harsh sunlight via clever overhangs.

No idea what the story is, but I’m loving this rendering of the Ice Cube house by Santambrogiomilano.

The view from inside: This home by Thomas Phifer and Partners is on Fisher’s Island, New York.

So what do you say to glass houses, yea or nay? Let us know in the comments section!

Hey all! Has this been the world’s longest week or what? I am so excited that it’s finally Friday! There haven’t been many minutes to spare for web surfing (do people still say that, or is it totally 1995?), but we’ve been having fun playing around with our formerly semi-dormant Pinterest account.

1. Pinteresting. If I dive into Jonathan Boivin’s pins, I may never get another post written, so I’m just dipping in a toe. If your eyes need to rest on a lot of cool stuff, check out his Architecture Board. I love a house perched in the woods, especially photographed in snow. Thanks for leading us to the Delta Shelter by Olson Kundig Architects Jonathan!

2. More ethereal architecture. Jonathan’s pins led me over to Gis Van Vaerenbergh’s site, which led me to this amazing project, Reading Between the Lines. A vernacular church reimagined in the landscape, rendered in concrete and steel:

photo by Filip Dujardin

3. Art Basel and shoes. Alright, going in a vastly different direction, I was catching up on a little Neiman Marcus blog action and came across these handpainted Charlotte Olympia Lichtenstein-inspired shoes. In honor of all the Art Basel festivities, Ms. Olympia will be in the Bal Harbour Neiman’s store December 4, hand-painting her Dolly platform pump in the shoe salon. There’s some private event buying and pre-ordering involved. While I wouldn’t dare teeter around on such a platform, I’d put them in a lucite box and admire them:

image via NMDaily

Speaking of Art Basel, I’m in love with this piece, from Spain’s galería elba benítez:

image from Art Basel via galería elba benítez

4. Christmas tunes. What else is going on this week besides trying to avoid bad holiday music? My favorite Christmas song will always be Joan Jett’s version of Little Drummer Boy, with Christmas In Hollis by Run-DMC running a close second, which can be found on the first A Very Special Christmas album with the awesome cover art by the late Keith Haring.

For an entire album that makes for some nice tree-trimming background music, you really can’t go wrong with A Charlie Brown Christmas by the Vince Guaraldi Trio.

I remember looking for a house with my parents when I was a teenager – one of my favorites was a converted 19th century dairy barn. The center of the first floor had a two-story volume, with a balcony all around it that led to the bedrooms around the perimeter of the second floor. Everything had been painted white. The whole house had the feeling of a rustic gallery. It was super cool and supremely impractical for our family, but it’s stuck with me. Thus, I felt like seeking out some converted barns to share with you today.

Converting a barn can help preserve not only the building but also the feel of the agrarian landscape. These are treasures that all too often are left to rot and fall apart. Here are som wonderful examples of barns-turned-homes for people:

This one is from Colonial Barn Restoration Inc.: 

The way they converted the large barn door into an entryway with side lites and a transom is especially clever.

Original rustic beams, wood siding and doors keep the feeling of the old barn alive.

Another great thing about barns is that they have tons of space for things like basketball and racquetball courts.

This barn by Kissling Architecture in Fredericksburg, Texas has been converted into a gorgeous ranch house. It’s remarkable how the massing has such modern lines:

The original stone adds so much patina and history, both inside and out:

The way simple, vernacular lines of buildings like barns, built for form over function, compare to the clean lines and simplicity of modern architecture is quite striking. This is especially apparent in this rustic-meets-modern project by Aldridge & Tanno Architects:

So some congratulations for some of our Design Public family are in order! Erika LaBiche Lehmann (V.P. of Public Relations) and Morgan Brown (V.P. Product and Marketing) are now Mr. and Mrs. Morgan Brown! Erika’s been sharing the joy by sharing her pictures on Facebook.

What make me laugh at myself today was this – after Erika shared a picture of the entire wedding party outside of the chapel in Rancho Palos Verdes, I didn’t think, “Oh, that’s Wayfarers Chapel by Lloyd Wright.” Instead, I thought “I think that’s the chapel where Naomi pulled a Dustin Hoffman and broke up Max’s wedding on the new 90210!” I may think I know my architecture, but the sad truth is, no matter how much I study and try to keep up with design, I’ll always know more about trashy TV shows than any other topic, without even trying.

Anyway, I’m glad a show a teenager should be watching, as well as Erika, led me to the Wayfarers Chapel, a.k.a The Glass Church. What blows my mind is that when Wright designed it back in the 1940s, the cliffside site was barren. Check it out:

I can’t believe how the redwood tress grew up and did exactly what he wanted them to – this is how he put it while he planned:

When the trees that surround the Chapel grow up, they will become the framework, become a part of the tree forms and branches that inevitably arise from the growing trees adjacent to it. I used the glass so that the natural growth, the sky, and sea beyond became the definition of their environment. This is done to give the congregation protection in services and at the same time to create the sense of outer as well as inner space.

I mean, Holy Organic Architecture! I love that while it’s all Godly and glass, it’s also groovy; check out that floor!

To find out how to worship, wed or just visit, check out wayfarerschapel.org. This is also where I swiped all of these wonderful images from.

Oh, and in case you missed it, check out Naomi, the wedding planner, making a Hail Mary pass at Max, the groom:

Congratulations Mr. and Mrs. Brown!

The last time I went to Chicago I saw Desperately Seeking Susan in the theater, and it was a new release at the time. Also, I was at an age where getting to see Desperately Seeking Susan was the coolest, and I spent my allowance on a bunch of Madonna-inspired rubber and silver bracelets at Contempo Casuals at Water Tower Place, oblivious to the amazing city around me. Luckily this past weekend, I returned to Chicago more mature and appreciative of architecture, and I found myself cruising Trulia for Chicago housing as soon as I had to leave. Here are just a few of the sites that make up the amazing city.

One of the most fun things you can do in Chicago is rent a bike and take it up or down the coast of Lake Michigan; we opted to go North. It was worth the horrendous customer service and outrageous prices at the bike rental place on the Navy Pier.

One of the great things about the architecture of Chicago is all of those little details on the buildings that came before Mies stripped everything down. The detail above is from what is currently a Bloomingdale’s Home store, formerly the Medinah Temple, designed by Huehl and Schmid, built in 1912.

While I knew a bit about the 1922 Chicago Tribune building/contest (in architecture school you learn that the second-place entry is the one everyone is still talking about, by Eliel Saarninen). What I didn’t realize is that the existing neo-gothic architecture  has all of these little fragments from other buildings around the world stuck in it, from castles in England to the Great Wall of China.

Okay, so I was not coordinated enough to ride my bike and snap a picture of 860-880 Lake Shore Drive at the same time, so they are missing from this photo essay, as well as a slew of other iconic buildings. Sorry! Anyway, Marnia City  (1959) by a.k.a. the honeycomb buildings, was built by one of Mies’ proteges, Bertrand Goldberg.

He also designed the Prentice Women’s Hospital, a Brutalist building that is currently in danger of being demolished (last I heard  Northwestern University was still pushing to tear it down; sign a petition to help it get landmark status here). This building is a feat of engineering and was one of the first designs to use CAD, which was cutting edge technology at the time. The building was completed in 1975.

I think I like this view of Frank Gehry’s Jay Pritzker Pavilion at Millennium Park (2004) the best. He sure knows how to make you want to go check out what the rest of it looks like with a big metal tease. Here’s what the rest of it looks like.

Obligatory shot of Cloud Gate (2004), a.k.a. “The Bean,” by Anish Kapoor.

Last picture I took before I got super tired and picture quality got even worse – Yvonne Domenge Sculpture at Millennium Park.