Architecture Wednesday: Emerald Art Glass House

The term ‘one-of-a-kind’ home is one that gets bandied about a lot; rarely are the homes one of-a-kind, but rather they are just amazing homes, on beautiful lots. And then you have those ‘work from home’ spaces, which really seem like glorified office space.

Well, the Emerald Art Glass House is truly a one-of-a-kind home and, well, not a work from home space, but a work under home space.

The house is a site-sensitive, cantilevered home for the owners of Emerald Art Glass, located on Pittsburgh’s South Side slopes. The home actually floats above the glass manufacturing facility and resembles a modern day foreman’s shack.

The industrial shape of the home, and the steel siding, help it to relate to the factory below, while a living roof connects the house visually to the slopes beyond.

Glass products are featured throughout, celebrating the owner’s craft: A radical, north-facing, butted, “Greenheat” radiant-heated GLASS facade functions from outside as a sign for the glass factory and from inside as a view catcher. A unique, glass rain-screen system clads a concrete block core. Inside the core, a glass stairway winds its way from the ground floor to the kitchen.

And it’s green: the architect decided to ‘recycle space’ in the same way we recycle our garbage, by putting to use the unused space above the owner’s warehouse in a dense urban neighborhood. In addition, the house is crafted of recycled materials and geothermal well-generated forced air complements the radiant heated floors and glass.

Emerald Art Glass house is located near that other architectural marvel, Falling Water, but it extends three times farther than that Wright House, making it probably the world's longest residential cantilever.

It’s quite the hangover.

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