Transparent additions to historic architecture physically expand the space while making the subtlest possible changes to the building exteriors, allowing you to see the original structures right through the glazed walls. Augmenting 500-year-old farmhouses,  Victorian row houses in London and some of Paris’ most iconic-looking apartment buildings, these modern glass extensions aim to blend in with the sky, offering transitions to gardens and bringing natural light into formerly dark interiors.

17th Century Manor Update by Jonathan Tuckey Design

Invisible from the street, this ‘ghostly’ addition to the 17th century Yew Street House in London by Jonathon Tuckey Design lets you see right through its walls to the original stone structure, disrupting its beautiful form as little as possible while adding a gorgeous light-filled dining space.

Farmer’s Cottage in Croatia by Proarh

Zagreb-based architecture firm Proarh renovated a dilapidated traditional Zagorje cottage in Croatia into a modern family home, retaining the external frame while replacing the existing porch with a transparent glass view facing a view of the mountains.

19th Century Parisian Photography Studio to Rooftop Apartments

This glass addition to a 19th century photography studio in Paris by Vincent Parreira Atelier is conceived as an ‘inhabited observatory’ perched atop a Haussmannian building in the city’s Opéra-Madeleine district.

Straatweg Extension by BBVH Architecten

An original masonry structure in Rotterdam, built in the 1930s, gets some much-needed natural light thanks to a two-story, all-glass wing added by BBVH Architecten, which features a transparent roof, facade and upper-level floor with an operable garage-style door leading out to the garden.

‘Salle Labrouste’ Former French National Library

A major overhaul to the French National Library by Bruno Gaudin and Virginie Bregal updated it for the 21st century while retaining its dazzling beauty, adding a glass gallery that serves as a rooftop promenade to link two sides of the structure’s quadrangle.

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Transparent Intentions 13 Glass Additions To Historic Architecture

A wooden airship has seemingly crash-landed onto the roof of the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague, wedged between two white museum buildings for dramatic effect to serve as a new space for literature and reading. Conceived by Leos Valka, director of DOX, and completed by Hut Architektury, the Gulliver Airship measures nearly 138 feet long and features a basketweave-like construction open to the air, protected from the rain by a transparent roof.

Taking inspiration from the zeppelins of the early 20th century, the airship aims to reflect the optimism, technological advancements and futurism of the era, inciting a sense of wonder when you gaze up at it from the ground level. Valka says he dreamed of “an absurdly fascinating organic shape” that would have a parasitic appearance, alien to the concrete and glass of the museum itself.

The ‘ship’ is accessible from the museum’s roof, and takes advantage of plentiful natural light for a pleasant reading environment. Adding such an unconventional structure is in line with the museum’s hope to encourage innovative thinking and take risks.

The DOX facility is a reclaimed factory, its renovation nominated for the prestigious Mies van der Role Award, and its purpose is “to create a space for research, presentation and debate on important social issues, where arts in dialogue with other disciplines encourage a critical view of the so-called reality of today’s world.”

“The shape of the zeppelin is symbolic,” reads a statement on the DOX website. “The early zeppelins represented the optimistic ideals of a new era of unprecedented technological advancements. With their remarkable monumentality and hypnotic dignity that would continue to fascinate generations to come long after they had vanished from the skies, they have always embodied the eternal human desire to fly, and have represented a certain utopian ideal.”

A backyard refuge to work, practice, paint or meditate separates you from the activities inside your home and gives you prime views of your backyard, garden or urban rooftop space. Adding a freestanding room can be as simple as having a fully-assembled prefab volume plunked right onto your property, and you can often customize them your ideal interior configurations, windows, built-in furniture and surfaces. Order one of these ready-to-go options, or use them as inspiration to build your own.

Prefabs by InOutside

A wood-clad cube with one corner entirely consisting of glass, the ‘Cooba’ by InOutside is a prefab modern room that’s ready to be dropped into your backyard as a studio, office or guest space. It starts at just over $15K (AUS) and when there’s easy access to the site, it can be delivered pre-assembled, requiring no concrete foundation or special equipment.

House Arc by Bellomo Architects

A modular system of bent steel tubes serves as the basis of ‘House Arc’, an unusually shaped rehab designed with environmental sensitivity in mind. It’s got a lattice screen roof providing a bit of shade and interest, rounded ends , translucent panels to let in light, and sliding glass doors. It’s made to be fully off-the-grid, can be flat-packed and shipped in a box that’s barely larger than that of a typical IKEA bed frame, and weighs 3000 pounds when complete.

Modular Library Studio by 3rd Space

Is this the coolest backyard room of all time? 3rd Space didn’t just add an office to the garden of a literature professor in Oxfordshire – they gave her an entire private library, with floor-to-ceiling windows and walls lined with books. The prefab system can really be used for anything, but the custom shelving really makes this unit special.

Green Roof Garden Studio by Eco Space

Vertical slats and optional green roofs add a whole lot of charm to Ecospace studios and their smaller models, including the medium-sized MidiPod. Based in the UK, Ecospace offers a sustainable and affordable alternative to a fixed addition. These studios are flexible and modular so they can be tailored, reconfigured or extended. The WorkPod is the smallest of all, built for a single user with a typical installation time of just 5 days.

The LoftCube

No backyard to work with? How about a roof? The Loft Cube functions like a ready-to-go rooftop extension and ranges in size from a modest 365 square foot volume, which requires no building permits in its home nation of Belgium, to a volume that’s plenty large enough to live in at over 900 square feet. You can even stack the cubes on top of each other to create a larger dwelling.

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Prefab Office Pods 14 Studios Workspaces Made For Your Backyard

At what point do modern extensions to historic structures surpass and overwhelm the original buildings rather than complementing and enlarging them? Contrasting architectural styles can be a tricky proposition, especially in preventing the addition from looking dated or outshining the historic buildings. In some cases, these modern renovations successfully preserve the originals while bringing something fresh and new, while others fall on their faces. These examples represent both extremes, and a few in between.

Beyazit Public Library Restoration by Tabanlioglu Architects, Istanbul, Turkey

In restoring Istanbul’s Beyazit Public Library, which dates back to 1501 and holds a collection of rare books, Tabanlioglu Architects took a minimal-intervention approach, inserting glass boxes to protect its most precious volumes and adding transparent membrane structures to cover the courtyard. A modest extension on one end of the building remains respectfully within scale of the original architecture in order to complement rather than outshine it. Contemporary lighting, support beams, modern furnishings and glass display cases contrast subtly with the traditional surfaces.

House in Vexin by Jean-Philippe Doré, France

Three historic homes come together into a single residence with the addition of a modern volume for ‘House in Vexin’ by Jean-Philippe Doré. The existing buildings were renovated in the vernacular style of the French village, while the glass and steel contemporary volume offers a deliberate (but not overbearing) contrast. From the street, only the historic buildings can be seen, the addition tucked out of sight.

Moritzburg Museum Extension by Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, Germany

The 15th century stonework of a ruined castle in Halle, Germany, ends up providing a striking envelope for a new structure by Spanish studio Nieto Sobejano Arquitectos, which is simply inserted inside. The extension provides a new roof for the formerly open-air ruins, and suspends a new floor from the center to add exhibition space without installing columns in the main gallery. The angular geometry of the roof adds additional space as well as skylights. At night, the glass insert shines like a lantern. Now the Moritzburg Museum, the building holds an important collection of modern art.

Sonora 113 Office Building by Iñaki Echeveria, Mexico City

Sonora 113 can’t really be called an extension, considering that the new section literally towers above the original. It’s more a case of a historic facade that has been integrated into new construction to preserve some of the neighborhood’s character. The architects worked around what was once a modest yet beautiful home, the towering addition rising many stories into the sky and curving around the facade to meet the sidewalk. It raises interesting questions about what constitutes historic preservation – though if the building had been more culturally significant, it likely would have been saved to stand on its own, and this project likely prevented it from being torn down altogether.

Music School Louviers by Opus 5 Architects, Normandy, France

First built in 1646, this historic stone building in Normandy served as a monastery, church, tribunal and prison before its transformation into a music school in 1990. Opus 5 Architects were tasked with extending space for the school and shedding all of its prison elements without allowing the new structures to overwhelm the old. The result is a series of reflective glass and concrete panels that manage to blend in with the original materials, complementing and multiplying them.

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A Study In Architectural Contrasts 12 Modern Meets Historic Additions

German concertgoers are so excited about the stunning new Elbphilharmonie building in Hamburg by architecture firm Herzog & De Meuron, they’re already snapping up tickets for the first events scheduled after its inauguration on January 11th, 2017. The glittering wave-shaped addition is a bold ultramodern example of adaptive reuse, delicately hovering over an existing brick warehouse building to assist with soundproofing its 2,100-seat arena. The project is finally nearing its completion after nearly a decade of construction, with all of its interior fittings set to be in place in time for its handover to its operators on October 31st, 2016.

With anticipation building for such a long time, it’s a good thing the final result is so impressive. Located in Hamburg’s Hafencity quarter on a peninsula jutting out onto the River Elbe, the complex not only mimics the adjacent surface of the water, it literally mirrors it with 1,100 panes of reflective cladding punctuated by convex elements and D-shaped windows reminiscent of fish mouths. Reflective basalt grey dots prevent the structure from overheating and add to the shimmering effect.

The complex also houses a 250-room hotel, 45 private apartments, two additional concert halls and a public viewing area with panoramic vistas of the waterfront. Reusing the old building pays tribute to the neighborhood’s industrial past even as Hafencity – a new urban redevelopment scheme that enlarges the Hamburg City Center by 40 percent – blossoms as a cultural hub. The scheme is seen as a blueprint for Hamburg’s development into the 21st century, reestablishing it as a modern maritime city.

Inside, the careful selection of state-of-the-art materials helps explain the long delay in construction, as an organically textured white ‘skin’ made of dense gypsum-fiberboard panels enhances acoustics and makes the space even more visually expansive. Other details, like a flowing glass wall on the panoramic ‘plaza,’ continue the aquatic theme.