A well of daylight in the middle of the house.

L'Isle-Adam is a town of dressed stone, slate and tile. You do not lean two storeys of glass against a townhouse here without thinking twice.

This one rises from the ground to the roof, black steel frame and full-height glazing, against the flank of the house. Neither era apologises to the other: the stone stays stone, the glass stays glass, and the seam between them is clean.

It is the only glass-house office in L'Isle-Adam.

It cannot be invented and it cannot be copied: it took this building, this orientation and this planning permission. It is why you spot the house at first glance — and why you remember it.

In the morning it comes in flat and climbs the suspended staircase. At midday it falls straight onto the high table. Late in the day it turns gold and leaves by the other side. You do not work the same way in a room that follows the sun.

This is where you take calls standing, coffee in hand, watching the street. Where meetings happen on the spot at the foot of the stairs. The only place in the house where you see the sky while working, and the only one where you run into everybody.

As the light goes, the relationship reverses. The glass house is no longer a window onto the town: it is the town looking in. The steel fades, the inside lights rise, the staircase draws itself in silhouette, and the building becomes a lantern set at the side of the road.

Drag the slider above: this is exactly what happens here, every evening.