A Modern Glass Farmhouse?! What’s Old is New Again.

Modern, glass and farm house.  Three words you probably weren’t expecting to see next to each other today.

From afar, this building may look like a traditional Dutch farmhouse, but up close you’ll notice it’s actually a building made of glass.  Glass farm is a new mixed-use retail and office building in the heart of Schijndel in The Netherlands designed by Dutch Architect Winy Maas.It’s a redevelopment of Schijndel’s market square, which was heavily damaged during WWII.  Using the concept of a traditional farmhouse, the architects of MVRDV worked with artist Frank van der Salm to photograph the remaining farms and average them together to create a stereotypical farmhouse.  How did he do this?  The morphed image was then printed onto glass using fritting technology to create the building. At 1.6 times the size of the average farmhouse, Glass Farm is a scaled up version that reflects how the town has grown up over the years.

Glass Farm illuminated at night

The glass allows day lighting into the interior, which minimizes heat gain while at night the interior lights shine out through the form and show off the building’s printed farmhouse façade.

View from inside Cafe looking outAnother view from the inside out of Glass Farm

I can see how Glass Farm was designed to evoke a sense of nostalgia, and may remind adults of their childhood and how things were bigger when they were smaller.  This inspirational building may have to be added to my bucket list of things to see!