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Spacial Magazine

Tactile Touch

By: Emma Hanzlíková Photo: Richard Bakeš, archive
#Lasvit World of Design
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The inven­tion of glass win­dow panes intro­duced a new and excit­ing era for archi­tects and artists alike. In order to stim­u­late our sens­es, glass has been used in both reli­gious and sec­u­lar build­ings. It has the capac­i­ty to cause the same sense of won­der that a child expe­ri­ences when look­ing at the pat­terns formed by loose pieces of coloured glass in a kalei­do­scope. But it is usu­al­ly not until we are adults that we find out a sim­ple ray of sun­light pass­ing through a glass prism can pro­duce sim­i­lar opti­cal effects, espe­cial­ly if the glass is han­dled by tal­ent­ed artists.

In the dis­tant past, a French abbot and his­to­ri­an, Sug­er of Saint-Denis, per­ceived glass and light as exist­ing in a sym­bio­sis of beau­ty. He for­mu­lat­ed a the­o­ry based on the idea of cathe­drals being defined by beau­ty, and the way he con­ceived his 12th-cen­tu­ry recon­struc­tion of the Basil­i­ca of Saint-Denis made the build­ing go down in art his­to­ry as one of the first exam­ples of the “dema­te­ri­al­ized” Goth­ic-style archi­tec­ture for which, among oth­er things, stained-glass win­dows are typ­i­cal. Day­light enters the cathe­dral through stained-glass win­dows, cre­at­ing new pat­terns in the interior.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch

DIVINE REFRACTION INDEX

Light was not adored by abbot Sug­er alone, it was in fact one of the key aspects of medieval aes­thet­ics in gen­er­al. It was per­ceived as an embod­i­ment of the meta­phys­i­cal pres­ence of God. For the last few cen­turies, reli­gious wor­ship, and per­haps even stan­dard prac­tice, have not been favourable to the cre­ation of fun­da­men­tal­ly inno­v­a­tive works of art with­in the estab­lished church tradition. 

In spite of this, there are count­less exam­ples of uncon­ven­tion­al­ly treat­ed win­dows in Euro­pean cathe­drals, cre­at­ed by famous artists who were asked to use a win­dow instead of a can­vas. At the end of the 1940s, Hen­ri Matisse designed the stained-glass win­dows for the New Chapel of Vence; twen­ty years lat­er, Marc Cha­gall cre­at­ed the win­dows for the cathe­drals in Reims and Metz, and a new stained glass-win­dow dec­o­rat­ed with colour­ful abstract pat­terns resem­bling pix­els was designed in 2007 by Ger­hard Richter for the cathe­dral in Cologne.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
One of the first glass sky­scrap­ers had a great impact on archi­tects all around the world, among them Czech archi­tect Karel Prager, who admit­ted to hav­ing drawn inspi­ra­tion from this project. Although the first imi­ta­tion of Sea­gram Build­ing by Mies van der Rohe (1954–58) is often con­sid­ered the Stro­jim­port build­ing (1962–72) by Zdeněk Kuna, Zdeněk Stup­ka and Olivi­er Honke-Houfek.

The most recent, and per­haps the most strik­ing exam­ple of this tech­nique, are the win­dows of the Gross­mün­ster Cathe­dral in Zurich. Designed by Sig­mar Polke, they are made up of trans­par­ent, thin­ly sliced pieces of agate. From folk­lore through cen­sor­ship to new tech­nolo­gies In Czecho­slo­va­kia too, many mod­ern painters par­tic­i­pat­ed in the dec­o­ra­tion of church­es. Among the most famous exe­cu­tions is the dec­o­ra­tion car­ried out in St. Vitus Cathe­dral and com­plet­ed in 1929, with stained glass win­dows by Mikoláš Aleš, Fran­tišek Kysela, Alfons Mucha, Karel Svolin­ský and Max Švabinský. 

A deci­sive moment in the devel­op­ment of the stained-glass win­dow tech­nique, how­ev­er, came with the event of the EXPO 58 World Exhi­bi­tion in Brus­sels. In Czecho­slo­va­kia, the 1950s and 1960s were a peri­od of the most intense exper­i­men­ta­tion with artis­tic stained glass and its mon­u­men­tal­i­ty, exem­pli­fied by the expres­sive three-dimen­sion­al stained-glass instal­la­tion enti­tled Sun, Water, Air (1957–58), cre­at­ed by Jan Kotík for the Czechoslo­vak pavil­ion in Brussels.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
The mod­el for a glass high-rise build­ing for Berlin (1922) helped Mies van der Rohe under­stand that through employ­ing glass in archi­tec­ture it is pos­si­ble to achieve the rich inter­play of light reflections.

In many cas­es, the focus was no longer on the clas­sic stained-glass tech­nique used in cathe­dral win­dows con­sist­ing of hand­made and hand-paint­ed pieces of glass tra­di­tion­al­ly held togeth­er by strips of lead. Many entire­ly new tech­nolo­gies emerged from Josef Kaplický’s glass­mak­ing stu­dio at the Acad­e­my of Arts, Archi­tec­ture and Design in Prague, such as the pro­duc­tion of mould­ed and etched glass with reliefs that influ­enced the work of the next gen­er­a­tion of glassmakers. 

To some extent, a tra­di­tion estab­lished itself in Cen­tral Europe that was based on the 19th cen­tu­ry folk glass under­paint­ing from which numer­ous artists drew inspi­ra­tion. It seems para­dox­i­cal that it was dur­ing the Com­mu­nist regime when the pro­duc­tion of stained glass flour­ished the most. Since glass­mak­ing was per­ceived as a craft dur­ing the total­i­tar­i­an regime, it was not sub­ject to the social­ist aes­thet­ic doctrine.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch

Glass as a mate­r­i­al allowed many artists to focus on abstract forms in order to cre­ate dec­o­ra­tive ele­ments for archi­tec­ture, which were often oth­er than reli­gious. The gov­ern­ment reg­u­la­tion at that time spec­i­fied that one to four per­cent of the total con­struc­tion bud­get had to be used for artis­tic dec­o­ra­tion, mak­ing artists essen­tial col­lab­o­ra­tors of the architects. 

Regret­ful­ly, many frag­ile glass art­works from the peri­od of nor­mal­iza­tion did not sur­vive the 1990s and the incom­pe­tent approach to inte­ri­or ren­o­va­tions. There were, how­ev­er, some rare excep­tions to this unfor­tu­nate rule, for instance the 1964 stained-glass object cre­at­ed by the Vála sis­ters for the inte­ri­or of the entrance hall of the for­mer Insti­tute of The­o­ret­i­cal Foun­da­tions of Chem­i­cal Tech­nol­o­gy in Prague.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch

THE SPIRITUAL ESSENCE OF ART

The way glass artists approach the stained-glass win­dows is com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent than the approach of painters. Inter­na­tion­al­ly respect­ed artists Jarosla­va Brych­tová and her hus­band Stanislav Liben­ský had the abil­i­ty to cap­ture and high­light the spir­i­tu­al essence of a place with­out nec­es­sar­i­ly rely­ing on motifs from Chris­t­ian iconog­ra­phy. In their works dec­o­rat­ing sacred spaces, they man­aged to achieve a sense of the tran­scen­den­tal even dur­ing the peri­od of uncom­pro­mis­ing nor­mal­iza­tion. They cre­at­ed win­dows for sev­er­al chapels, includ­ing two for St. Wences­las Chapel in the St. Vitus Cathe­dral (1964–68).

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
The emp­ty glass prism hous­es only one sacred object — the Junkers F 13 air­craft in which Tomáš Baťa, the entre­pre­neur and founder of Bata shoe com­pa­ny, died in 1932. The mon­u­men­tal but also very sim­ple build­ing by Fran­tišek Lydie Gahu­ra (1933) is a mod­ern ref­er­ence to a sub­tile Goth­ic cathe­drals with stained-glass win­dows. This func­tion­al­ist gem suc­cess­ful­ly com­bines both reli­gious and sec­u­lar ambience.

Par­tic­u­lar­ly impres­sive is their glass dec­o­ra­tion of the gate in the ear­ly Goth­ic chapel of the Most Holy Trin­i­ty of the Horšovský Týn chateau (1987–91). The win­dow panes made from float glass have the capac­i­ty to accen­tu­ate the prop­er­ties of the inte­ri­or while remain­ing its inte­gral part. Depend­ing on the day­light through­out the day, the light pass­ing through the tint­ed glass pro­duces var­i­ous kinds of atmos­pher­ic effects.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
The ‘luxfery’ glass bricks of var­i­ous shapes and pat­terns were both loved and hat­ed. Mod­ernist archi­tects favoured the pos­si­bil­i­ty of trans­par­ent walls but for many, espe­cial­ly res­i­dents from East­ern Europe, they have the after-taste of com­mu­nist era when they were high­ly overused in interiors.

Brych­tová and Liben­ský were not pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned with the inter­pre­ta­tion of the litur­gy, but with the pur­suit of their own artis­tic strat­e­gy whose aim was exper­i­men­ta­tion with glass and its explo­ration as a mate­r­i­al. In order to under­stand the spir­i­tu­al dimen­sion of their works, it would per­haps be more ade­quate to acknowl­edge the influ­ence of Zen Bud­dhism, which they observed in the prin­ci­ples o of the work of the Japan­ese archi­tect Tadao Ando.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
The Inter­na­tion­al Exhi­bi­tion EXPO 58 in Brus­sels was a leg­endary suc­cess for Czechoslo­vak glass. The exhi­bi­tion One Day in Czecho­slo­va­kia won a Gold Star and thir­teen oth­er awards. The exhi­bi­tion was designed by Jindřich San­tar, who col­lab­o­rat­ed with Jiří Trn­ka, Antonín Kybal and lead­ing glass artists Stanislav Liben­ský and Jan Kotík. Fol­low­ing great inter­na­tion­al recog­ni­tion, the so-called Brus­sels style devel­oped in archi­tec­ture and design in Czecho­slo­va­kia in the fol­low­ing years.

FIAT LUX

Cre­at­ing a com­plete­ly trans­par­ent house has been the dream of many archi­tects since time immemo­r­i­al. Despite the fact that botan­i­cal green­hous­es allow­ing the growth of trop­i­cal plants even in north­ern cli­mates can be traced back to as ear­ly as the 17th cen­tu­ry, it was not until 1851 that the green­house-like struc­tures were used for an entire­ly dif­fer­ent pur­pose, name­ly indus­tri­al exhi­bi­tions. The archi­tect Joseph Pax­ton used his knowl­edge as a land­scape gar­den­er to build the Crys­tal Palace in Hyde Park, Lon­don, for the first Great Exhibition. 

This tem­ple of con­sumerism with the ground plan of a tra­di­tion­al basil­i­ca, how­ev­er, did not boast any stained-glass win­dows. The pre­fab­ri­cat­ed cast-iron struc­ture with glass panes allowed for easy assem­bly while also ful­fill­ing the require­ment for a tem­po­rary struc­ture. The lifes­pan of this build­ing that could, quite appo­site­ly, be described as the largest shop win­dow of the world, was only six months, but since then glass has become a fix­ture in archi­tec­ture, find­ing its way to its very foundations.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
Hor­i­zon­tal­ly divid­ed sculp­tur­al stained-glass instal­la­tion Sun, Water, Air by Jan Kotík exhib­it­ed dur­ing EXPO 58 in Brus­sels depicts the sun, a fly­ing bird and swim­ming fish. These colour­ful images have a lot in com­mon with the clas­si­cal Goth­ic cathe­dral stained glasss win­dows, although their pur­pose was not reli­gious but pure­ly decorative.

The glass brick, known in some lan­guages as the luxfera, or the light-bear­ing brick, emerged to become a pro­to­typ­i­cal, yet uncon­ven­tion­al struc­tur­al ele­ment across civ­i­liza­tions. Just thir­ty years after the Lon­don Great Exhi­bi­tion end­ed, James G. Pen­ny­cuick had his inven­tion of the glass brick patent­ed in Boston. In Bohemia, the glass bricks were used for ceil­ing illu­mi­na­tion in the con­struc­tion of the Prague arcades in the Lucer­na Palace or U Stýblů and glass blocks, spe­cial­ly designed by Fran­tišek Vízn­er in 1981, were also used for the fac­ing of the line B sta­tions of the Prague underground. 

The con­no­ta­tion of being Lucifer’s curse has its roots in the rather abun­dant use of the glass bricks in the bath­rooms of pre­fab­ri­cat­ed blocks of flats of the nor­mal­iza­tion era. Nev­er­the­less, the glass bricks of dec­o­ra­tive shapes were used as ear­ly as 1902 by Dušan Jurkovič on the wall beside the spi­ral stair­case of Jan’s house in Luhačovice, com­bin­ing Art-Nou­veau ele­ments with traces of local folk­lore tradition.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
Stanislav Liben­ský pho­tographed while work­ing on a mon­u­men­tal study of win­dows for St. Vitus Cathe­dral in Prague (1964). He designed them with his life part­ner and col­lab­o­ra­tor Jarosla­va Brych­tová. The pair became world famous for their mon­u­men­tal glass sculp­tures, but also cre­at­ed the stained-glass win­dows in the Chapel of St. Wences­las in Prague’s St. Vitus, Wences­las, Vojtěch and Vir­gin Mary Cathe­dral (1964–1968), the win­dow in the Chapel of St. Anne’s Chapel in St. George’s Monastery at Prague Cas­tle (1974–1975), sev­en stained-glass win­dows for the cas­tle chapel in Horšovský Týn (1987–1991) and eight win­dows for the cas­tle chapel at Špil­berk in Brno (2001–2003).

GLASS AS AN ARCHITECTURAL ELEMENT

How­ev­er, the glass bricks do not have to be used only as a dec­o­ra­tive acces­so­ry of archi­tec­ture. Ren­zo Pian’s design for the Her­més depart­ment store on Tokyo’s Gin­za (1998–2001) proves what counts. The very first glass build­ing was erect­ed in Paris. Designed by archi­tects Pierre Chareau and Bernard Bijvoet, the late 1930s Mai­son de verre was to serve as a pri­vate gynaecologist’s office. At that time, the func­tion­al­ist archi­tects were already work­ing with the notion of a com­plete­ly light­weight skele­ton struc­ture and hung sash windows. 

Around the same time, a thou­sand kilo­me­tres to the east of Paris, the archi­tect Mies van der Rohe man­aged to design hung sash win­dows for the Vil­la Tugend­hat (1929–30) in Brno. Slid­ing auto­mat­i­cal­ly into the floor, the win­dows dis­ap­peared, cre­at­ing a sense of com­plete inter­con­nec­tion between the inte­ri­or and the exte­ri­or. This can be per­ceived as an absolute ful­fil­ment of the require­ment of trans­paren­cy, where the view of the gar­den is not dis­turbed in any way.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
Liben­ský and Brych­tová were able to achieve a sense of the tran­scen­den­tal only by mono­chrome glass and its tex­ture. The dis­tinc­tive colours of the glass in the Holy Trin­i­ty of the Horšovský Týn chateau, (1987–91) shaped in mould cre­ate an inter­est­ing play of colour­ful light in tones of grey, blue, pink­ish-orange, pur­ple and pink which in the ear­ly evening har­mo­nize on the chapel walls with the coloured sand­stone of the ribs.

The idea of a house built entire­ly of glass was some­thing van der Rohe con­sid­ered even ear­li­er. In 1922, he designed a build­ing known as the Glass Sky­scraper for the city of Berlin. A mod­el made of glass made him real­ize that “by employ­ing glass, it is not an effect of light and shad­ow one wants to achieve, but a rich inter­play of light reflections”. 

After emi­grat­ing to the Unit­ed States, he cre­at­ed a glass-clad house in New York. The Sea­gram Build­ing (1954–58) was one of the first sky­scrap­ers boast­ing an all-glass facade. A few floors low­er, yet still very sim­i­lar, is the build­ing of the Insti­tute of Macro­mol­e­c­u­lar Chem­istry of the Czechoslo­vak Acad­e­my of Sci­ences in Prague, designed by the archi­tect Karel Prager (1958–60). Prager him­self admit­ted to have embraced the lega­cy of Mies van der Rohe. 

Archi­tect Prager liked to work with met­al and glass and could not imag­ine mod­ern archi­tec­ture with­out these mate­ri­als. For him, glass sym­bol­ized the moder­ni­ty of tomor­row, as he him­self stat­ed: “The vision of mod­ern archi­tec­ture has always been linked to glass as a fun­da­men­tal artis­tic and struc­tur­al element”.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch

On sev­er­al occa­sions, Prager asked the afore­men­tioned cou­ple of glass artists to col­lab­o­rate on his projects. As for “glass in archi­tec­ture”, the work of Brych­tová and Liben­ský eas­i­ly cov­ers all the cat­e­gories imag­in­able. In addi­tion to free-stand­ing inte­ri­or sculp­tures, they were capa­ble of pro­duc­ing sacral win­dows, wall-mount­ed reliefs, foun­tains, columns, or even cov­er­ing an entire build­ing in glass, as in the case of The New Stage of the Nation­al The­atre (1981–83). In col­lab­o­ra­tion with the building’s archi­tect, Karel Prager, they cre­at­ed a glass facade made of hol­low blown SIMAX resem­bling tele­vi­sion screens or glass bricks on steroids.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
Karel Prager coop­er­at­ed with Stanislav Liben­ský and Jarosla­va Brych­tová on the exte­ri­or of The New Stage of the Nation­al The­atre in Prague (1981- 83). As per the vision of mod­ern archi­tec­ture he man­i­fest­ed: “Clar­i­ty and bril­liance, shim­mer­ing ele­gance, sub­tle­ty and soft­ness of reflec­tion, cold mag­nif­i­cence and colour­ful exu­ber­ance, sense of per­ma­nence and dura­bil­i­ty, mat­ter-of-fact­ness and real­i­ty, trans­paren­cy and crys­talline puri­ty as well as del­i­ca­cy, pride and grandeur are the emo­tive fea­tures which under­pin the imag­i­na­tive qual­i­ties of the style of future decades, and which are ren­dered con­crete by the per­cep­tion and effects of glass sur­faces in architecture.”

HOUSE MADE OF BOHEMIAN GLASS

Designed by the ov‑a archi­tec­tur­al stu­dio and com­plet­ed four years ago, the head­quar­ters of the Lasvit com­pa­ny have become the present-day Crys­tal Palace as well as a trib­ute to all the build­ings in Czechia that were made of glass. Over­lap­ping glass tiles, devel­oped in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Lasvit and its glass and tech­nol­o­gy experts, are inspired by the way slate roofs are laid. As a result, the glass facade is accen­tu­at­ed by an unusu­al, scale-like effect. An inter­est­ing mon­u­ment to Tomáš Baťa was designed in 1933 by archi­tect Fran­tišek Lýdie Gahu­ra. Sit­u­at­ed in Zlín, it has a dis­tinc­tive but intan­gi­ble qual­i­ty of being just on the bor­der­line of the sacred and the pro­fane. Its most promi­nent fea­ture is a del­i­cate glass exterior.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
Lasvit HQ in Nový Bor by Czech stu­dio ov‑a (2019) is an hom­mage to the glass hous­es which became an inde­pen­dent motif in the his­to­ry of archi­tec­ture. The del­i­cate cot­tage giv­ing the impres­sion of an igloo built of ice blocks, in facts embod­ies the glass­mak­ing tra­di­tion of the region of the north­ern Bohemia region.

Per­haps it is the mut­ed, dif­fused, coloured or oth­er­wise dis­tort­ed light pass­ing through glass that aston­ish­es us. And Czech artists and archi­tects have proven on numer­ous occa­sions that it is not nec­es­sary to get a com­mis­sion to pro­duce sacral works to be able to con­vey the mys­ti­cal moment of enlightenment.

Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
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Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
One of the first glass skyscrapers had a great impact on architects all around the world, among them Czech architect Karel Prager, who admitted to having drawn inspiration from this project. Although the first imitation of Seagram Building by Mies van der Rohe (1954-58) is often considered the Strojimport building (1962-72) by Zdeněk Kuna, Zdeněk Stupka and Olivier Honke-Houfek.
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
The model for a glass high-rise building for Berlin (1922) helped Mies van der Rohe understand that through employing glass in architecture it is possible to achieve the rich interplay of light reflections.
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
The empty glass prism houses only one sacred object — the Junkers F 13 aircraft in which Tomáš Baťa, the entrepreneur and founder of Bata shoe company, died in 1932. The monumental but also very simple building by František Lydie Gahura (1933) is a modern reference to a subtile Gothic cathedrals with stained-glass windows. This functionalist gem successfully combines both religious and secular ambience.
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
The ‘luxfery’ glass bricks of various shapes and patterns were both loved and hated. Modernist architects favoured the possibility of transparent walls but for many, especially residents from Eastern Europe, they have the after-taste of communist era when they were highly overused in interiors.
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
The International Exhibition EXPO 58 in Brussels was a legendary success for Czechoslovak glass. The exhibition One Day in Czechoslovakia won a Gold Star and thirteen other awards. The exhibition was designed by Jindřich Santar, who collaborated with Jiří Trnka, Antonín Kybal and leading glass artists Stanislav Libenský and Jan Kotík. Following great international recognition, the so-called Brussels style developed in architecture and design in Czechoslovakia in the following years.
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
Horizontally divided sculptural stained-glass installation Sun, Water, Air by Jan Kotík exhibited during EXPO 58 in Brussels depicts the sun, a flying bird and swimming fish. These colourful images have a lot in common with the classical Gothic cathedral stained glasss windows, although their purpose was not religious but purely decorative.
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
Stanislav Libenský photographed while working on a monumental study of windows for St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague (1964). He designed them with his life partner and collaborator Jaroslava Brychtová. The pair became world famous for their monumental glass sculptures, but also created the stained-glass windows in the Chapel of St. Wenceslas in Prague’s St. Vitus, Wenceslas, Vojtěch and Virgin Mary Cathedral (1964-1968), the window in the Chapel of St. Anne’s Chapel in St. George’s Monastery at Prague Castle (1974-1975), seven stained-glass windows for the castle chapel in Horšovský Týn (1987-1991) and eight windows for the castle chapel at Špilberk in Brno (2001-2003).
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
Libenský and Brychtová were able to achieve a sense of the transcendental only by monochrome glass and its texture. The distinctive colours of the glass in the Holy Trinity of the Horšovský Týn chateau, (1987-91) shaped in mould create an interesting play of colourful light in tones of grey, blue, pinkish-orange, purple and pink which in the early evening harmonize on the chapel walls with the coloured sandstone of the ribs.
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
Karel Prager cooperated with Stanislav Libenský and Jaroslava Brychtová on the exterior of The New Stage of the National Theatre in Prague (1981- 83). As per the vision of modern architecture he manifested: “Clarity and brilliance, shimmering elegance, subtlety and softness of reflection, cold magnificence and colourful exuberance, sense of permanence and durability, matter-of-factness and reality, transparency and crystalline purity as well as delicacy, pride and grandeur are the emotive features which underpin the imaginative qualities of the style of future decades, and which are rendered concrete by the perception and effects of glass surfaces in architecture.”
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch
Lasvit HQ in Nový Bor by Czech studio ov-a (2019) is an hommage to the glass houses which became an independent motif in the history of architecture. The delicate cottage giving the impression of an igloo built of ice blocks, in facts embodies the glassmaking tradition of the region of the northern Bohemia region.
Lasvit Spacial Magazine: Tactile Touch

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