Glass House

The notion of “familiar” has recently become crucial in the debate generated by Everyday Aesthetics. In this essay I will explore this concept following Arto Haapala and Yuriko Saito’s theories, then I will investigate the notion of familiar – and some antonym notions (i.e. strange, uncanny, alien) – while embracing a phenomenological approach. Referring to German phenomenologist Gernot Böhme's theory of atmospheres, my paper shall compare a notion of a glass house, theorized by Modernism, and a notion of a shell house, seen from different perspectives by Walter Benjamin, Gaston Bachelard and Juhani Pallasmaa. I will finally draw attention to the notion of strange as possibly degenerating into the idea of uncanny or alien, for instance when the transparency of glass is used as a tool for control or when it is embodied in the digital screens of hyper-technological homes.

Lina Bo Bardi’s Glass House (Casa de Vidro) is a National Historic Landmark designed and built in the late 1940s in São Paulo, Brazil. The house is one of the symbols of modern Brazilian mid-century architecture. It is a historiographical reference of the history of modern architecture in Brazil. This article reports the experience, outcomes, challenges, benefits, and limitations of the Heritage Building Information Modeling (HBIM) process. The HBIM was developed for Lina’s Glass House considering the following steps: modeling planning; data acquisition; model elaboration; recording of pathologies and damage; data management; documentation process. The HBIM developed includes historical information and geometric data from direct measurements, laser scanning, photographic survey, and pathologies documentation. The model allows professionals responsible for architecture, conservation, and restoration to access integrated information on projects and the current condition of the buildings easily and quickly. Good precision was achieved for important building elements, contributing to maintenance and restoration actions. This experience allowed the development of an integrated workflow of activities for collecting, processing, recording, and managing information that may serve as a baseline for future projects for the documentation of modernist buildings.