Ireland’s traditional block-build housing could be under threat from the greenhouse effect. For the past few years we’ve seen the concrete and breeze-block industries spend vast sums of money on high-profile advertising to assure us that homes built of concrete are best.

The campaign was launched to counteract the growing popularity of timber frame and all-timber homes. But a third element is about to enter the battle: glass.

Volkhard Friese, a German businessman, believes glass offers clear benefits to one-off homebuilders in Ireland and is sure that relatively affordable, largely glazed homes will become the norm in Ireland.

Friese has moved to Waterford, where his company, Davinci Haus, is about to launch a luxury brand of German kit homes. With about 65% of the exteriors made from glass, these are the first heavily glazed pre-manufactured kit homes of the sort popular on the Continent to appear on these shores.

Work begins on a show house sometime in the new year, and Friese believes that before long, largely glazed homes will be the norm in Ireland, in much the same way as timber homes have taken off.

Unlike conventional homes, which can often take up to a year to build, a travelling German construction team will leave a luxury home in its wake in an average of just 20 weeks. The buyer gets a high-spec residence that allows light in through every wall surface.

According to Friese, Davinci Haus’s Irish customers will pay about €400,000 to €600,000 for house sizes generally ranging from 2,500-4,000 sq ft. This may be highly expensive in Germany, but it is relatively good value here, where property prices and building costs are among the highest in Europe.

If you were buying a block-build one-off home for the same money, you’d typically get up to 2,000 sq ft. With site prices taken into account, both properties would be roughly on a level par.

If the German company manages to get a toehold here, it is almost certain that manufactured kit homes with a heavy glazed content will follow from other leading suppliers.

The increasing popularity of one-off high-spec homes and a drift towards the modernist school of design has caused something of a glass revolution in Ireland in recent years. Glossy mags and extensive television coverage of modern home designs have helped drive a rebirth in architecture for one-off homes.

In the past, highly glazed homes have suffered from poor practical design. Joins tended to leak, and the material most commonly used for the frames, aluminium, often suffered from discolouring. Insulation levels were poor, leading to high heating costs. Hardly surprising, then, that they fell out of favour.

But although technology has advanced sufficiently to make highly glazed homes comfortable and durable, the cost of having one built has remained prohibitive to all but a few wealthy clients.

Prior to the arrival of Davinci Haus, those wanting a cutting-edge, largely glazed home would almost inevitably have been forced to beg for the attention of one of a handful of the most popular modernist architectural practices, which charge substantial fees.

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