We don’t tend to think of brand-new residential builds as iconic architecture. The phrase usually conjures mid-century greats such as Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater or the glass-and-steel modernist purity of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion.
But when Steve Smith completed the Invisible House — a mirrored box on stilts in Warwickshire that reflects the surrounding silver birch trees so precisely it appears to vanish into the landscape — in 2018, the modern home immediately made headlines and has since been shortlisted for a RIBA award and quickly became a modern phenomenon.
