An architect has designed a sustainable home inside a glass box, where fruit and veg grow, and their family can thrive

Situated on the family farmstead, surrounded by trees and pasture, stands the extraordinary glasshouse where architect Margit Klev and her young family have made their home. Here, Klev has created a house within a house, placing her bespoke building inside a vast glass barn, delivered as a kit from Denmark and erected on site in just two weeks. This glass shell not only protects the family home inside it, but also shelters an indoor garden and garden rooms, where Klev can nurture plants and trees that would never usually survive a Norwegian winter.

“Inside the greenhouse I can grow grapes, apricots, nectarines and peaches,” says Klev, whose two greatest passions are architecture and gardening. “I can also grow a lot of herbs around the other plants: parsley, salvia, melissa… herbs that don’t grow so well outside. And I can also use the greenhouse to grow small plants from seeds that I can plant out in the open later on, in the spring or early summer.”