Glass in the Snow: Triple Glazing at 2,400 Metres

The brief asked for the impossible on its face: a single great room with the forest on three sides, usable through a January cold snap, closable from an app. Glass houses and alpine winters are old enemies — the detailing is the entire project.

Snow as insulation

The 600 mm roof is engineered to carry its snow instead of shedding it; settled snow is an excellent insulator. Low-iron triple-glazed units run to 3.6 metres, entry glass is heated against ice dams, and six 150-metre boreholes feed the ground-source system below.

In winter the house disappears. At night it reappears as a lantern.

Close it from an app

The owners leave for months. Frost alarms, remote monitoring, automated blinds and a standing-seam roof ready for the next PV phase mean the house looks after itself — and tells Barcelona the moment it can't. That telemetry binder now ships with every cold-climate handover.