A glass act: new BBC series of the World's Most Extraordinary Homes takes viewers to Japan, Switzerland and Portugal

Glass is the central theme running through the extraordinary homes uncovered by Piers Taylor and Caroline Quentin as part of a new BBC's new series. 
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Becky Davies21 March 2018

A handful of bizarre and beautiful homes make rare television appearances in the new series of The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes.

Actress Caroline Quentin and architect Piers Taylor visit Portugal, Switzerland and Japan to tour three very different properties.

ROOMS WITH A VIEW IN SWITZERLAND
Kicking off in Switzerland, the pair go to Villa Am See, a house whose raison d’etre is the view.

A vast floor to ceiling window spans the entire length of the living room giving unrestricted views of the mountains and lakes.

In the kitchen, “a secret space”, says Quentin, a sports car dashboard clock gives away the owner’s obsession with Porsches.

In fact, the whole place was originally designed to house his collection of six of the finest specimens of automotive engineering coming out of Stuttgart.

They also visit a house so remote that the timber it was made from had to be flown in by helicopter.

Maison Aux Jeurs is at first glance a traditional Swiss chalet, but was built in a V-shape to provide its harpist owner with the same magnificent views as those from the living room.

A house deliberately built cheek-by-jowl with not only a busy road but a railway is also featured.

The Flexhouse is also made of glass, but the owners’ blushes, and those of passing train passengers, are spared in the bathroom where a translucent glass wall protects their modesty.

SKY POOLS AND PRIVATE DUNES
In the second episode, the pair go to Portugal, where a holiday home for a pair of Britons, Casa Na Gateira, blends into the ancient vineyards and olive groves with a drystone wall concealing a snake-like home designed by Camerim Architects.

The Dune House is very aptly named, sitting not among dunes but with its own sand dunes that visitors can walk across to get to the roof and enjoy the view.

Yet the best one by far is The Wall House, where an outdoor swimming pool with a glass floor sits over a lap pool and lounge area where you can watch swimmers above your head.

A GLASS ACT IN JAPAN
In the third episode, Quentin and Taylor visit Japan, where they are picked up in what can only be described as hot-tub motorboat.

They are taken to a house protected by a series of brutal-looking concrete blocks, but behind the fortress-like walls lies “a diamond in the rough” made almost entirely made of glass.

The aptly named Glass House For A Diver was built by architect Tetsuya Nakazono for a Mr Haragami in Etajima, an island in Hiroshima Bay.

The blocks were cast with with grooves to enable the installation of reinforced steel to make them even stronger in this earthquake zone.

The seemingly fragile glass house is thus protected against the worst that Mother Nature can throw at it.

The House in Izura was also designed to withstand earthquakes, but this property is entirely made of timber and is even designed to resemble a tree.

For the ultimate in stability, the splayed timbers are bonded with the bedrock it sits on.

Also made of wood, but looking like a series of interlinked yurts, is Jikka House, set in a forest.

However, not even the most lavish of glamping yurts could offer this level of luxury, featuring as it does not only a pool but a bath at the centre of a spiral walkway wide enough for a wheelchair user to take their ablutions without getting up.

Glass is the theme of the final house in a busy road in the city of Hiroshima, but providing an oasis of calm behind glass bricks and overlooking a garden courtyard full of beautiful trees that give the illusion that you’re having a glimpse of the edge of a forest.

At the front, the Optical Glass House allows residents to see the busy, noisy world go by, but not hear it - something that would be an ideal solution for many Londoners’ lives.

Series 2 of The World’s Most Extraordinary Homes is now available on iPlayer

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