What’s It Like Living in a Glass Dome?

With a church next door and the city hall to the other direction, Hannah Krutmann’s window-to-window Berlin living room has a clear view of two giant clocks. “What a perk to always know the time,” she says. 

Living in a glass home has plenty of other benefits. Sunset views top the list. Sight lines of Berlin landmarks, like TV Tower and Potsdamer Platz, are up there too. Sunny days are illuminated with a disco ball hanging from the ceiling, while rainy ones make for a relaxing soundscape to cozy up on the couch. So how did Krutmann luck out with this light-drenched gem?

In October 2019, when Krutmann, co-founder of the ’70s-inspired print magazine Almost 30 and PR agency Almost, and her partner were looking for an home, the search didn’t come easy, but patience and persistence paid off. After a month of an intensive search, they attended a showing of this glass dome apartment, which checked off their top priority: light, light, and more light. “When I entered the space on the day of the viewing, I was so in love with it,” she says. “It was a cold morning in October and the sun was flooding the whole apartment.”

There were 10 other people at the viewing, but immediately after the appointment, Krutmann and her partner sent in their application and crossed their fingers. A few hours later they were offered a rental contract. 

There are downsides to everything, though, even a plant-filled glass dome apartment awash in soothing neutrals. For one, the space can heat up quickly in the summer; open windows can only combat the greenhouse effect so much. Sun damage can also be an issue, but that doesn’t bother Krutmann. “Good thing I’m a sucker for a bleached-out ’70s color palette of pastels,” she says.

Krutmann’s biggest challenge, though, is storage. While the home is fairly large—just over 1,000 square feet—most of the walls are slanted or made of glass, leaving a lack of shelves and closets. “In general, I try to have items that look decorative, even if they are things for daily usage like kitchen stuff,” she says. “When it looks nice, I don’t mind if I can’t put it behind a door.” 

The history of the building is a bit of a mystery to Krutmann, but she believes the glass dome was added in the ’90s, when the top floor was converted into apartments. “Rumor has it that the previous tenants also loved the place and stayed for 10 years. Why wouldn’t they, right?” She says that once you start keeping an eye out for glass domes, you can spot quite a few in Berlin. “I even recently saw a whole glass house on top of a building not far from here,” she says. 

Overall, the endless views and doses of vitamin D far outweigh the minor drawbacks. “We have the most gorgeous sunsets here, and it feels so peaceful to look over the city,” Krutmann says. “I do a yoga practice in the glass dome every morning and sometimes I get hooked looking up into the clouds.”

Introducing Domino’s new podcast, Design Time, where we explore spaces with meaning. Each week, join editor-in-chief Jessica Romm Perez along with talented creatives and designers from our community to explore how to create a home that tells your story. Listen now and subscribe for new episodes every Thursday.