Exterior Glass Siding Material Green Roof Material Flat Roofline Design Photos and Ideas

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.”
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.
Inspired by ancient ruins, Frankie Pappas crafts a green-roofed, brick guesthouse that connects deeply with nature in the South African Bushveld.
The tower features a ladder for access to the utilities, and the roof is planted with native shrubs to soften the concrete construction and reflect the approach taken with the landscaping.
A concrete block tower in the garden beside the home contains a water tank and solar heating boiler with a shower below.
The home requires very little maintenance and features a lightweight construction. The modularity of the design also helped to avoid excessive material waste during construction.
The front fence is made from sandblasted stainless-steel rods coated in a protective penetrating sealer. The fence is cantilevered out from a concrete beam below the garden, and the gate retracts into an underground pit. “It’s the first of its type in Australia,” says architect Tony Vella. “It was a work of precision to have these thin rods slide down into the ground through 30mm holes.”
The home incorporates a number of sustainable features. Glass walls are protected by concrete eave overhangs and automated external sun blinds. In addition, the heavily insulated walls, floors, and ceiling (with roof garden layers) add to the efficient energy performance of the home.
The home is located across from one of Melbourne’s bay beaches, and it needed to easily accommodate the family’s regular beach visits. “From morning swims to summer days on the beach, the home is intrinsically connected to the sun, water, and sand,” says architect Tony Vella.
“The clients are passionate about nature conservation,’ says architect Ant Vervoot. “They know how every plant, insect, and animal fits into the greater ecosystem—their curiosity about the Bushveld is insatiable and inspiring. It really is an amazing thing to be around them in the bush.”
House of the Tall Chimneys is entirely off the grid. Power is generated with solar panels; black and gray water is contained and managed before it’s further filtered by the undergrowth; and potable water is collected from the nearby stream. “More important than these technological fixes, however, is the fact that the building requires very little in terms of resource input in order to function successfully,” says architect Ant Vervoort. “Careful design is probably the most fundamental aspect in designing environmentally sustainable buildings.”
“We asked Frankie for a home, and they built us a fantasy,” remarked the clients when House of the Tall Chimneys and House of the Big Arch were completed.
The guesthouse is located in a private reserve in the Waterberg, a mountainous region about three hours from Johannesburg.
The green roof was designed to give back the space that was taken up by the building’s footprint to the Bushveld and the animals. It is planted with site-endemic grasses, aloes, and creepers. “What pleases me one hell of a lot is that the building is completely hidden when you’re more than 20 meters away from the structure,” says Vervoort. “It’s invisible, and I’m super proud of that. The most important aspect of this building was to revere the site. I use the word revere because we didn’t just respect it—we treated this site as if it were God. I think we should do that more as architects.”
“The chimneys are in essence two big columns with some beams between them, and they look a bit like rugby posts,” says architect Ant Vervoort. “The crossbars of the rugby posts hold up the timber beams.”
A brick path leads through the forest to the entrance of House of the Tall Chimneys. “Bricks are a really cost effective way of creating space,” says architect Ant Vervoort. “Over and above that, when used correctly, bricks create complex patterns that I don’t think it’s possible to mimic using other materials.”
The entrance to House of the Big Arch is a nine-meter-tall passage, which creates a high-pressure system that pulls cool air into the kitchen.
House of the Tall Chimneys is the guesthouse of House of the Big Arch, also by Frankie Pappas. The two buildings share the same material palette, and are linked by a long path through the forest.
The aluminum windows are powder coated in a charcoal color, which is intended to match the shadows created by the forest and help the building further blend in.
The team lidar scanned around 40,000 square meters of the forested site to create a 3D model—including trees, branches, and roots—that would allow them to accurately determine how to position and design the building to have minimal impact on the surrounding trees. “We then designed a seriously thin building that could slot between the trees,” says architect Ant Vervoort.
The ground-floor living space looks inward to the courtyard and is protected on all other sides by the mass of the building and the blank brick facade.
A side patio leads from the front of the home to the courtyard. The same red bricks used for the facade have been used for the paving to create a seamless fabric that wraps the built form and the site.
The slim profile of the red bricks used in the facade creates a textured surface across the monolithic form, while red and brown tones of each brick create an organic, varied pattern of color.
The entire home is wrapped in a brick "skin" that extends onto the ground at the front and sides of the home. The entrance is found through a simple void in the facade beside a pond with floating vegetation that hints at the verdant interior.
The steel bridge—which echoes the design language of the steel brise soleil—extends from the second-floor study into the rear garden.
The deep brise soleil shades the interior as well and offers privacy from neighboring buildings without compromising the views.
Both the boys' bedroom and family room spill out into the ground floor garden, providing the children with an expanded play area outside of the house.
The two monolithic walls on the north and south sides are integrally colored, steel-troweled plaster. They anchor the home in its site as well as provide privacy from neighboring homes.
The home has large areas of glazing on the east and west facades. Given the small footprint of the home and the open floor plan, the entire interior experiences direct light in the morning and evening.
There is now continuous, stepped landscaping from one home to the next as the buildings and street rise up the hillside.
The green roof is planted with local succulents, including cascading pigface.
A Cor-Ten steel "sleeping volume" seemingly floats atop a predominantly glass "living volume." Intersecting these two stacked volumes is a double-height, timber box which houses the multipurpose spaces.
Bundeena Beach House connects the street and wider community to the water views beyond thanks to its low-lying form and a native roof garden, which the architect describes as a "green infinity edge."
Large timber-framed glass sliding doors open the kitchen/dining space to the rear courtyard on two sides.
The floor to ceiling glass sliding doors opens the living spaces to the surrounding waterfront and landscape
The firm worked to provide as much outdoor access as possible, so the living spaces spill out onto a protected veranda, and a ladder climbs up to the green roof.
The horizontal concrete assembly appears to hover gently above the landscape, touching only on supporting columns. Floor-to-ceiling glass provides transparency from outside to inside.
Floor-to-ceiling glass walls maintain important view corridors for the occupants.
Architect Richard Hammond and his wife, Daniela, a designer, saw their move to San José as a temporary adventure. But when they found an abandoned, partially built house on a beautiful sloping site, they decided to turn it into their dream home, putting down more permanent roots in the process.
A series of open and closed volumes, the house incorporates a range of materials, including local mahogany, standing-seam metal, shingled glass, and concrete. A green roof tops one end.
On the green roof, guests enjoy stunning panoramic views, a hydromassage pool, and a lounge area.
The Continuous Extension exterior is defined by coarse spray plaster, large floor-to-ceiling windows, and larch banding.
Set on a steep slope, the building features angled geometry that mimics the mountains and terrain.
The upper floor is wrapped in glass, with the exception of the solid wood front door and the cantilevering roof.
The 4,600-square-foot home is set on bucolic farmland.
The home's two volumes are distinct not only in their orientation, but also in their materiality. The lower level is wrapped in stone, while the upper level is composed of glass.
The new home is composed of two rectangular volumes stacked on top of each other.
Link Farm House by Slade Architecture