Clear favorite

Residential Architect, August, 2002

Dutch architect Dirk Jan Postel of Kraaijvanger-Urbis in Rotterdam has been experimenting with laminated glass for years. Apparently practice makes perfect: His latest project, a vacation home for a Dutch couple in the Burgundy region of France, won Grand Prize in the 2002 DuPont Benedictus Awards.

Postel and his clients developed the idea for the project after discovering on the property a limestone abutment that served as an unused explosion chamber during World War II. They turned it into a kitchen, bath, and bedroom and topped the stone base with a laminated glass pavilion. Two of the panels support the entire weight of the two-ton cantilevered roof, made of stressed-skin timber. "The absence of all interfering elements is interesting. Each element highlights and strengthens the other," said one judge.

Postel explains, "Both the glass and the limestone keep their own merit this way. I like the impression of the glass cutting through the limestone, as if it doesn't end."--m.d.