The Glass House is a

heritage-listed This list is of heritage registers, inventories of cultural properties, natural and human-made, tangible and intangible, movable and immovable, that are deemed to be of sufficient heritage value to be separately identified and recorded. In ma ...

domestic dwelling at 80 The Bulwark,

Castlecrag Castlecrag is a suburb on the lower North Shore of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia 8 kilometres north of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Willoughby. Castlecrag is ...

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

, Australia. It was designed by Ruth and Bill Lucas. It is also known as the Glasshouse or the Lucas House. It was added to the

New South Wales State Heritage Register The New South Wales State Heritage Register, also known as NSW State Heritage Register, is a heritage list of places in the state of New South Wales, Australia, that are protected by New South Wales legislation, generally covered by the Heritag ...

on 21 October 2016.

History

Construction

The Glass House is part of Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin's 1920s subdivision. The couple had arrived in Australia in 1914, having won the competition for the design of the new national capital, Canberra. In 1920, Griffin formed the Greater Sydney Development Association Ltd. to build residential estates on three picturesque headlands in Sydney's Middle Harbour. Castlecrag was the first of these estates, begun in 1921. Griffin and Marion moved from Melbourne to Castlecrag in 1924, and Marion took the role of a community leader at Castlecrag. By 1937, only nineteen houses, sixteen of them designed by Griffin, had been built on the 340 lots. The Glass House was one of three adjoining houses designed by Lucas. The Glass House was designed by Sydney architects Ruth and Bill Lucas as a home for him to share with his wife and their children and was also to be used as a studio for their architectural practice and completed in 1957. Lucas' design projects included educational centres, an Aboriginal women's refuge, and furniture and theatre sets. The family moved to

Paddington Paddington is an area in the City of Westminster, in central London, England. A medieval parish then a metropolitan borough of the County of London, it was integrated with Westminster and Greater London in 1965. Paddington station, designed b ...

in the early 1960s and joined the campaign to help save the area from

slum clearance Slum clearance, slum eviction or slum removal is an urban renewal strategy used to transform low-income settlements with poor reputation into another type of development or housing. This has long been a strategy for redeveloping urban communities; ...

. Bill Lucas worked to develop architectural processes and prototypes. He was a member of the loose association of architects that is now known as the Sydney School.

Recognitions

Docomomo International Docomomo International (sometimes written as DoCoMoMo or simply Docomomo) is a non-profit organization whose full title is: International Committee for Documentation and Conservation of Buildings, Sites and Neighbourhoods of the Modern Movement. ...

recognises the Glass House as a seminal example of the "shelter-in-nature" minimalist compositions constructed in northern Sydney post World War II. William J. R. Curtis, author of Modern Architecture since 1900, singles out the Glass House as a remarkable example of an Australian adaptation of modernist principles, being "so understated that it virtually disappeared into its wooded setting". The Glass House was also listed on the

on 21 October 2016.

Description

The Glass House is a single-storey residence built over a steeply sloping bush site. One corner of the house barely touches the natural

sandstone Sandstone is a Clastic rock#Sedimentary clastic rocks, clastic sedimentary rock composed mainly of grain size, sand-sized (0.0625 to 2 mm) silicate mineral, silicate grains, Cementation (geology), cemented together by another mineral. Sand ...

outcrops. The rest of the building and the decks are suspended over vegetation and rock outcrops. The rectangular plan is divided up into a grid of . A timber framework is braced with steel cross-bracing: four slender steel posts are the main structural elements, forming the corners of the

lightwell In architecture, a lightwell,light well, light-well sky-well,skywell, sky well or air shaft is an unroofed or roofed external space provided within the volume of a large building to allow light and air to reach what would otherwise be a dark or u ...

. Entry is from a path beside the

carport A carport is a covered structure used to offer limited protection to vehicles, primarily cars, from rain and snow. The structure can either be free standing or attached to a wall. Unlike most structures, a carport does not have four walls, and u ...

. Visitors enter straight into the first living room, which was used by Bill and Ruth Lucas for meetings with clients. A wall separates this area from the kitchen and a larger portion of the living/dining room. The living room and kitchen are glazed, opening onto the front deck and the internal deck and light well. The original construction is described in an article in Architecture in Australia, October–December 1957. The house is suspended on four square

columns A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column is a compression member ...

. All the timbers are rough-sawn creosoted hardwood inside and out. Wall timbers are restricted to

mullion A mullion is a vertical element that forms a division between units of a window or screen, or is used decoratively. It is also often used as a division between double doors. When dividing adjacent window units its primary purpose is a rigid sup ...

s and posts at centres and the roof framing to purlins at centres on beams at centres. The roofing was originally constructed with deep corrugated asbestos cement, having no roof

batten A batten is most commonly a strip of solid material, historically wood but can also be of plastic, metal, or fiberglass. Battens are variously used in construction, sailing, and other fields. In the lighting industry, battens refer to linea ...

s. Safety mesh was stretched over the purlins and supported a 57-gram (2 oz) white fibre-glass blanket between clear

Visqueen Visqueen is a brand of polyethylene plastic Plastic film, sheeting (typically low-density polyethylene) produced by British Polythene Industries Limited. It is the registered trade mark of British Polythene Limited in numerous countries throughou ...

and double-sided sisalation.

Restoration

The floor is tiled with a slate that has cracked because of the movement of the structure. The house used to move considerably in the wind before 2003 due to missing cross-struts and beams that originally braced the house. In 2002–2003, a remedial works program replaced all the foundation fittings and re-braced the house. Bracing was increased in some areas from 1/2" steel rods to 3/4" steel rods. The floor comprises Stramit panels, being masonite-faced on hardwood joists at centres. Stramit is also used for the internal walls. A more extensive restoration was undertaken in 2023 under the custodianship of Cracknell and Lonergan Architects. The building work was undertaken by Bill and Ruth Lucas' son, Peter Lucas (with Esteban Carretero).

Architecture and heritage awards

The restoration undertaken in 2023 was awarded a NSW Heritage Architecture Award (Conservation) 2024 (awarded to Cracknell and Lonergan Architects) and a 2024 Built Heritage Award (Small Scale) at the NSW National Trust annual awards held in May. In June 2024 the house was awarded the

New South Wales Enduring Architecture Award The New South Wales Enduring Architecture Award is an architecture award presented annually by the New South Wales Chapter of the Australian Institute of Architects (AIA) since 2003. The award recognises existing buildings older than 25 years sin ...

by the New South Wales Chapter of the

Australian Institute of Architects The Australian Institute of Architects, officially the Royal Australian Institute of Architects (abbreviated as RAIA), is Australia's professional body for architects. Its members use the post-nominals FRAIA (Fellow), ARAIA (Associate Member) an ...

(AIA). In November 2024 the Glasshouse restoration project was awarded the highest national architecture award for heritage, the 2024 Lachlan Macquarie Award for Heritage Architecture at the natonial AIA Awards.

References

Bibliography

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Attribution

{{DEFAULTSORT:Glass House, Castlecrag, The New South Wales State Heritage Register Castlecrag, New South Wales Houses in Sydney Articles incorporating text from the New South Wales State Heritage Register Houses completed in 1957 1957 establishments in Australia