Georg Driendl lets sunlight and summer breezes into hisnearly transparent SOLAR TUBE HOUSE on the outskirts of Vienna.

Viennese architect Georg Driendl likes to name the houses he designs after the sun. His Solar Box, for instance, combines an orthogonal, glazed section with a 19th-century home. Solar Deck, a concrete-and-glass structure, has wraparound balconies on two levels. The Solar Tube House, in the northwest outskirts of Vienna, Austria, stands out as the most inventive and visually intriguing of the series. Rising to a metal-clad, glass-fronted tubular form, the building is like a telescope topping an amply glazed rectangular volume. Neither its name nor form are frivolous. Driendl was inspired by the humble tubular skylight, a device that channels sunlight indoors by means of a rooftop collector, reflective pipe, and diffuser. His novelty was to envision the entire house as a solar collector, one that needs little heating, cooling, or electric illumination.