In 1950, Bruno Mathsson was commissioned by Kosta's artistic director Vicke Lindstrand to design a terrace of six houses (which subsequently became five) for the factory's employees, principally master craftsmen and senior officials. The building site was an old railway area south-east of the glassworks. Here, the same design and construction ideas were used as in the construction of the Kosta Boda Art Gallery – exterior walls with extremely large glass areas.
Mathsson supplied his patented ”BrunoPane” glass sections, which consisted of an outer double-glazed insulating unit and a single pane on the inside with an air gap between them. The floors in all rooms were laid with Kosta's own glass mosaic on a concrete slab containing the water-borne underfloor heating also patented by Mathsson, which eliminated the need for intrusive radiators in front of the windows.
The terraced housing block is 99.4 metres long and built on a single level beneath a pitched roof with a shallow gradient. The external wall frames consist of prefabricated modules. The facades are dominated, apart from the glass sections, by red and yellow brick and timber panelling. By means of the fireplace chimney for each flat, Mathsson created a natural division of the long facade. The spandrels of the glass sections were clad in glass mosaic in various colours, where each house was given a mosaic in its own distinct shade.
Each terraced house has an area of 108 m² and is built in an L-shape around a private courtyard, with the kitchen and living room facing the entrance side, and the bedrooms and bathroom segregated in the wing facing the courtyard. Towards the neighbour, there is a garage.
The complex was ready for occupancy in 1956 and an official press preview was held on Thursday 24 May the same year. The project, which was a major experiment, was deemed a success and Kosta planned to continue with more glass houses for the employees. However, no more workers' housing was built in Kosta under the auspices of the works after 1956, and the housing issue was instead resolved primarily by the works encouraging its employees on favourable terms to build their own detached houses.
In 1987, the glass houses were sold along with all the works' buildings that were not needed for glass production. The property changed hands rapidly several times. No one took any long-term responsibility for maintenance, and by 1991 the decay had gone so far that the municipality decided on compulsory administration. In 1993, the terraced houses were sold at a judicial auction and were subsequently owned by, among others, German and Danish interests, but the neglect continued. At about the same time, people began to pay attention to the architectural and cultural-historical value of the houses. During the mid-1990s, the County Administrative Board tried to initiate a discussion on listed building status, but failed because no property owner accepted the Board's demands. In 2004, the Ministry of the Environment decided on the expropriation of the houses, which was carried out in 2006.
Thereafter, a thorough restoration began under the supervision of antiquarian Jan Westergren from Kalmar County Museum, which restored the terrace of townhouses to almost its original condition from 1956. An official reopening was held on 14 June 2007 in the presence of the then Minister for Culture, Leif Pagrotsky. In connection with the inauguration, the County Administrative Board announced that it had decided to list the glass houses as a listed building.
