Images via Deceuninck / Archello unless otherwise noted

Singer Yulia Chicherina may not be a household name outside of her native Russia, but I was interested to see photos of her country house. Located outside Moscow, the distinctive structure features two rows of triangular floor-to-ceiling windows, uniformly distributed on the faces and edges of the off-white cubic edifice.

The singer's two-storey house has been designed as a cube with 24 triangular openings for mirror-glass windows and a glass entrance door. The Live House, an exceptional project by Yulia Chicherina and her architect husband, gives plenty of room for creativity and leisure. It was originally conceived as an art laboratory to give inspiration, to originate fresh ideas, and to create new songs. Now Yulia Chicherina's Live House is not just a creative laboratory, but a countryside house for back-to-nature recreation far from the urban hustle, noise and stress.

Roughly one-third of the walls are windows (each of which weighs in at 150kg), but the original design included a single exception: an iron door. Frustrated that it didn't match the windows, Chicherina turned to UK-based building materials company Deceuninck—"the world leader in the sphere of production of PVC systems for the construction industry"—who developed a custom glass vestibule to match the windows. "The square-shaped entrance door in the triangular doorway opening is made of shockproof hardened glass and enclosed by a reinforced-plastic transparent prism."

Image via Porter Novelli

The "Live House," as it is known, is certainly a striking silhouette against a bucolic backdrop for what looks like as far as the eye can see, but it's certainly lives up to its purpose as a remote private residence. So too is it expressly designed to withstand its environment:

Its design takes full account of all particulars of the Russian climate, including frost, short but extremely strong heat, temperatures going through the zero point back and forth, as well as intensity of the use of profile systems and high aesthetic requirements of consumers with regard to windows' and doors' exterior...

The house is built like a Lego set: it is made of huge heat retaining blocks that we assembled on our own very quickly. Triangular windows as high as the walls themselves are made of Deceuninck profiles. These are the widest profiles we could find, and they retain heat best. As a result, the house is very warm. We came here several times this winter when the frost was the hardest. After the fireplace heated the house, it remained warm for yet a couple of days.