00:00They took the roof off their home, in Sweden. Then they enclosed the entire house in glass.
00:06Outside, winter temperatures could fall below freezing. Inside, the family had turned the top
00:11of their house into a place to play. But the missing roof wasn't the strangest part. To
00:17understand that, you had to see what lay beyond their front door. But before we start, smash the
00:22like button and make sure to subscribe if you haven't, and hit that notification bell so that
00:27you won't miss any new stories. For Charles Saccalotto and Marie Granmar, the project began
00:33with a question about the kind of life they wanted. In the Stockholm archipelago, a house
00:38could sit among trees and beautiful scenery, yet the weather could keep its occupants indoors
00:43for long stretches. A garden was right outside the window, but enjoying it depended on the season.
00:49Charles and Marie wanted a home that gave them more time in that space. Charles, an engineer,
00:55had become interested in an unusual Swedish idea. Instead of changing only the rooms inside a house,
01:02it changed the conditions immediately around it. At first, Charles looked for an empty piece of land
01:07where he could build something entirely new. Eventually, he chose an existing summer house.
01:13That decision gave the project a different starting point. A wooden building already standing
01:18in the landscape, originally suited to a much more limited part of the year. Making it into a
01:23permanent family home would require a transformation. From the outside, the finished project would seem
01:29to contain two buildings at once. There would be the house where the family ate and slept,
01:34and another, much larger structure surrounding it. The gap between them would become essential.
01:40The inspiration came from a concept called Naturhus, or Nature House, developed by Swedish architect
01:46Banked Warren. Charles drew on that approach to enclose the summer house, and in addition inside a
01:52greenhouse. He used safety glass for the outer shell, giving the structure transparent walls and
01:58a high roof. The greenhouse covered nearly twice the footprint of the house itself. That extra space was
02:04deliberate. A narrow glass covering pressed against the walls would never have created the same
02:10possibilities. Charles and Marie were leaving room for something most people kept entirely outside their
02:15homes. To understand the difference, imagine entering through the outer glass doors. You would
02:21already be inside a building, yet the wooden house would still be ahead of you, with its own walls,
02:27windows, and entrance. Between the two lay space for paths and plants. Through the transparent shell,
02:34the surrounding landscape remained visible. Rain could fall beyond the glass, while this sheltered area
02:39stayed protected from it. The family could step through their own front door without stepping straight into
02:45the weather. Their home now had a boundary beyond the one most visitors expected. That explained the
02:51first startling detail. The missing roof. The large greenhouse roof provided the outer cover, allowing the
02:58pitched roof of the wooden house to be removed. In its place, the family gained an open roof deck beneath
03:03the glass. What had been a dark, enclosed upper space became somewhere to read, sit, and play. There was still
03:11a roof
03:12overhead, but it belonged to the larger structure. Looking upward no longer meant looking at the ordinary
03:17ceiling of an attic. The sky was visible through the glass. The change was dramatic, but shelter alone
03:24could not answer the next question. What happened when the temperature fell? The sun supplied part of the
03:29answer. Light passed through the greenhouse and warmed surfaces inside it. The enclosed space sheltered the
03:36house from wind and direct exposure to rain and snow. On suitable days, the difference could be striking.
03:42Charles described a late January example, in which it could be below freezing outside, while the upper
03:48area inside felt much milder. Conditions still depended on the sunlight and weather. The glass did not create
03:55endless summer. It gave the family a protected space where the outdoor temperature was no longer the only
04:01thing shaping how comfortable they felt. Winter still mattered. The household used a wood-burning stove
04:07when additional heat was needed. During dark or cold periods, the glass could not simply replace that
04:13source of warmth. But the project had already changed what the house had to face. Its outer wooden walls
04:19stood within a sheltered enclosure, and the family gained useful space beyond the rooms they heated.
04:25The distinction mattered, because the most impressive part of the design was easy to misunderstand.
04:30A greenhouse around a home could help with the climate around it. It could not make the seasons
04:36disappear. And as the days grew warmer, the family had to deal with the opposite problem.
04:41The same sunlight that made the enclosure appealing in colder weather could make it too hot in summer.
04:47Without a way to release that heat, the glass could become uncomfortable. So the structure had
04:52openings in the roof, shading, and large sliding doors that allowed air to move through.
04:57The roof openings responded to temperature, while the doors helped create ventilation across the
05:03enclosure. The shell could provide shelter when that was useful, and open up when the space needed
05:08air. Its usefulness depended on that flexibility. Building a giant greenhouse was only part of the
05:15solution. Making it livable required thinking through both extremes. That also changed the impression
05:20that the family had sealed themselves away from the world. They still lived in a wooden house with
05:25ordinary private rooms. Around those rooms was a space they could use differently as conditions
05:31changed. On a pleasant day, open doors connected the greenhouse more closely to the outside.
05:36In less inviting weather, the glass offered protection while preserving the view. The arrangement
05:42gave them more choices about where to spend their time. And some of the clearest evidence of its success
05:47was growing beside the paths, close enough to reach after stepping out of the house.
05:52Charles and Marie grew produce, including figs, tomatoes, cucumbers, and grapes. The sheltered
05:58growing space expanded what they could cultivate around their home. A garden had become part of the
06:03journey between the outer entrance and the front door. It was possible to walk out of the living space
06:09and into an area that supplied food, as well as somewhere to sit. Harvests still followed growing
06:15conditions and seasons. A glass shell did not turn every plant into a year-round crop. But the family had
06:21brought more of that growing season into their daily surroundings. The next question was how they
06:26would support it. A garden needs water, and collecting rainfall was one part of their approach.
06:32Water arriving on the property could be saved and used for the plants. Kitchen and garden material
06:37could also return to the growing cycle through composting. These choices linked activities that
06:42were usually treated separately. Living in a house, disposing of what was left over,
06:47and tending a garden. The plants were close enough for that relationship to be visible.
06:52However, Charles had gone further than rainwater containers and compost. Another part of the home
06:58was working out of sight, and it helped explain why the greenhouse was much more than an unusual cover.
07:04The household had its own sewage treatment system, independent of the municipal network.
07:10Charles built a system that separated and treated household waste through several stages,
07:15with storage, filtration, and growing areas playing different roles. Water and nutrients could
07:21become useful to plants after that treatment. Beneath the greenery was a working part of the
07:27household. What happened inside the wooden house could therefore support what grew outside its front door.
07:33Seen from the road, the glass was the obvious invention. Inside, the more surprising achievement
07:39was how several parts of ordinary household life had been connected.
07:43Now the space between the house and the greenhouse made much more sense. It provided shelter,
07:49room to grow food, and a place where parts of the water and nutrient cycle could serve a purpose.
07:55Each discovery changed the meaning of the one before it. The garden helped explain the extra floor area.
08:02The transparent roof helped explain the open deck. The treatment system helped explain how the
08:08household supported the plants. None of that meant the family needed nothing from the outside world.
08:13Their home still required energy, maintenance, and supplies. What they had created was a practical
08:20experiment in making better use of resources already passing through their lives. There was a substantial
08:26cost to putting that experiment together. Accounts of the project placed the greenhouse construction
08:32at about 80,000 euros at the time. That was the outer structure, rather than the price of an entire
08:38finished family home. It was a serious investment, and lower heating or maintenance needs did not
08:44automatically prove when it would pay for itself. Glass, doors, ventilation, and the systems serving the
08:52garden all remained things that needed care. For Charles and Marie, the value of the project also lay
08:58in what the space allowed them to do. A bill could record one kind of saving. It could not measure
09:04every
09:05extra evening spent outside the living room. Marie described the greenhouse as extending their warm
09:11season by around four months. She said they could eat in that outdoor-feeling space from April to October.
09:18Those extra months made the project's impact easy to picture. It meant a larger part of the year in which
09:24the garden could become part of family life. Meals, plants, and time together occupied the space that
09:31would otherwise have been exposed to the weather. Their solution worked on the scale of everyday
09:37routines. The benefits were there when someone opened the front door and could stay a while instead of
09:42immediately going back inside. And above the wooden rooms, the roof deck brought the story back to its
09:48most unlikely image. Their sun could play beneath the glass where the old pitched roof had once stood.
09:54The surrounding trees and sky remained part of the view. The same structure that sheltered the garden
10:00had made room for that change overhead. It was a striking result from a decision that sounded so strange
10:06at the beginning. Charles and Marie had taken an existing summer house and found another way to inhabit it,
10:12using the space around it as carefully as the space within its walls. From a distance,
10:17the glass was what caught the eye. Living beneath it gave the family reasons to appreciate smaller
10:23things. A sheltered place to sit, fruit growing near the door, and more months in which their
10:28surroundings felt welcoming. Those moments gave the structure its purpose. The roof they had removed
10:34had once marked the end of their home. Under the glass, it had become the beginning of a different life.
