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Exterior Glass Siding Material Design Photos and Ideas

The new steel-and-glass rear facade expands views and daylight for the ground floor living areas and the primary bedroom above. The sliding glass doors are by Otiima Windows.
In rural Quebec, La Shed Architecture designed a simple gabled home that echoes the form of the region’s traditional barns.
Kudoo is built on a two-cent plot—a unit of land measurement, commonly used in parts of South India, equivalent to 1/100th of an acre. Half of the site is occupied by the built form, with a landscaped border surrounding it. A major challenge was the location of the home, 100 metres from the main road. This meant that everything had to be carried to site by hand and added to the construction cost.
“Initially, we proposed fewer glass panes to control sunlight and energy loss,” says architect Daniel Iragüen. “But in the end, we made the house almost completely transparent.”
Nigel Chouri and Crick King bought a tattered ’50s beach house for $911K and introduced water-resistant features, a Spanish-style plaza, and a dreamy garden ADU.
Set high in Crestwood Hills, Richard Neutra’s 1956 Adler House underwent a faithful restoration by Tyler and Margaret Lemkin.
The cabin hovers over the site on stilts, giving it a floating effect.
A concrete lintel and post marks the new window and door in the facade. The building's position makes inhabitants feel like they are hunkered down in the olive grove.
As Nicolás Tovo and Teresa Sarmiento of La Base embraced modular design as part of their architectural practice, they noticed that prospective clients were wary of prefabricated construction. So the duo teamed up with Place, an Argentine prefab builder, to make a proof of concept just outside the Patagonian resort town of Bariloche.
Ignacio wanted the walkway up to the house to offer an immediate connection with nature.
Completed in just six weeks by Australian practice Archiblox, this modest prefab home is perched atop cliffs with prime views of Avalon Beach, just a short drive away from Sydney. Oriented east to west to maximize cross ventilation, the house is clad in marine-grade Colorbond Ultra steel and Queensland blue gum to protect against the elements.
For an escape from bustling San Francisco, architect Craig Steely and his wife Cathy have created a modernist getaway on a lava field next to a black sand beach on Hawaii’s Big Island. Fitted with floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the ocean, the steel-framed home is one of several homes that Steely built on the recently active lava field.
Fed up with flashy, environmentally insensitive beach homes, architect Gerald Parsonson and his wife, Kate, designed a humble hideaway nestled behind sand dunes along the New Zealand coastline. Crafted in the image of a modest Kiwi bach, their 1,670-square-foot retreat consists of a group of small buildings clad in black-stained pine weatherboards and fiber-cement sheets.
The 1936 Herbert and Katherine Jacobs House in Madison, Wisconsin, marks the first Usonian-style home designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.
Roble House's elevation allows the structure to be immersed in the dense forest setting.
Opposite the optical glass facade, the slant of the northern facade is the result of Tokyo urban planning requirements. A constant gradient diagonal line restriction dictated that the home’s mass recede diagonally away from the northern property line, to ensure adequate light and ventilation for the neighboring property—a policy not uncommon in lower-density residential areas of Tokyo.
Hiroshi Nakamura & NAP used 87 translucent bricks to reframe a family’s connection to nature and the city.
The concrete-and-steel home by Faulkner Architects gives one family a refined escape in the mountains of Northern California.
Extra-wide concrete pillars help to support the studio at its core.
The same large format porcelain was used for the exterior patio, which is flush with the thresholds on the sliding glass doors. Blaine added a small bumpout at the end to accommodate a larger primary suite shower.
A triangular pool is also terraced into the landscape surrounding the pavilion-like house.
After a fire ravaged the site in rural Portugal, architect Miguel Marcelino designed this country house on its existing stone garden terraces.
The summer home is located on the west coast of Zeeland in Denmark. Egelund’s son had also recently built a summer house nearby, and Egelund and Dahl appreciated the work of the architect, Mads Lund. “We felt we could have a good collaboration with him, rather than being a small client with a big company,” Egelund explains. “We started to talk with him about what we liked about my son’s house, as well as our own ideas for our summer home.”
The home features a combination of interior and exterior living spaces that afford privacy to the occupants. “There are social spaces for everyone to be together, but also spots outside the building where people can have a private coffee—and that’s so important,” says architect Line Solgaard.
The home is perched lightly on the site and the landscape has been integrated into the architecture through a sympathetic form and materiality, and the expansive windows. “We long for this untouched nature,” says architect Line Solgaard of the site. “It brings us calmness and maybe even helps us be more in touch with ourselves.”
The bedroom is elevated around five meters above the forest floor, and the space beneath has—like the green roof—been given back to the Bushveld. “Naturally, this space is shadier than the surrounding forest, so it creates a different microclimate for different species to flourish in that area,” says architect Ant Vervoort. “It’s an area that we have cultivated.”
The view from the rear lawn towards the house. The outdoor living room is accessible from the family room (on the right) and the living room (on the left).
To the front, the gardens are laid around a central lawn with a circling driveway which provides parking. There is also a garage for family cars.
The new addition is spanned by a sliding glass door to the kitchen, bringing in much more natural light and creating easy flow between inside and out. The owners especially appreciate how the new deck is at grade with the exterior door for a seamless transition, making the kitchen feel “a part of the garden,” says the homeowner.
Wexler and Harrison's original plan was to create affordable vacation homes for a growing middle class. When this home first went on the market with the others in 1962, it was competitively priced between $13,000 and $17,000. Today, the kitchen has been restored following guidelines from its original configuration, and the landscaping was updated in 2001 with Wexler's oversight.
Arcadia windows and doors with bronze finishes help achieve the homeowners' goal of indoor/outdoor living.
On the north-facing facade, it’s easy to discern where the original glass doors used to open directly to the deck. In spring of 2012, Block Island contractor John Spier replaced the entire wall of glass panels.
To turn a home into a permanent residence for a family of four, Rama Estudio attached a prefab glass-and-steel box that extends into the surrounding wilderness.
DGN Studio renovated and extended a semidetached Victorian terrace near London Fields for clients Rebecca and Roman. The rear extension is defined by a material palette of exposed concrete and white-oiled oak, which was chosen for its durability, as well as its warm texture and grain. “We are very aware of the dialogue around the sustainability of concrete as a building material, so we were keen to make sure its use was related to a specific set of practical tasks for which it would stand the test of time,” says DGN studio cofounder Geraldine Ng.
The goal with the Lodge was to simplify the original structure to focus the experience on the natural setting and framing the coastline's exceptional views.
“With the restoration and reopening of The Sea Ranch Lodge, we are excited to honor the vision of the original developer and original group of architects including Al Boeke, Lawrence Halprin, and MLTW (Charles Moore, Donlyn Lyndon, Whitaker, and William Turnbull) – stewardship and respect of the land, sustainability for The Sea Ranch and creating a gathering place for all Sea Ranchers,” said Kristina Jetton, General Manager, The Sea Ranch Lodge.
Nestled into a grassy hillside, the cabins overlook ponds and oak, birch, and linden trees that grow on the property.
"The composite structure is extraordinarily durable,
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