I've always wanted to design my dream house. Claude Opus 5.5 turned out to be the perfect excuse.

The dream: a glass house on a northern lake, built around a Japanese onsen—a steaming stone pool you can soak in while snow falls on the frozen lake. Here's a quick tour; the full showcase, with films and all twenty-eight renderings, is at onsenlakehouse.com.

The house lit like a lantern across the frozen lake

The house

You arrive through a motor court with a cherry tree on a little island. The lake side is one long wall of glass, and in summer the middle slides open. Inside, a sunken conversation pit around the fire.

The arrival court in spring, with the cherry tree in bloom
The arrival court in spring, with the cherry tree in bloom
The lake wall open at blue hour
The lake wall open at blue hour
The conversation pit in winter, the fire lit
The conversation pit in winter, the fire lit

The bath

Out back, the stone pool sits in a rock garden beneath the bedroom deck. A covered walk leads to the bathhouse: a tatami changing room, a sauna, wash stations and a cold plunge. The sauna looks out over a raked gravel garden to the lake.

The stone garden
The stone pool steaming on a winter night
The stone pool steaming on a winter night
The bathhouse changing room
The bathhouse changing room
The sauna, looking out to the lake

The shore

Along the shore there's a glass studio with a library wall, and a little cottage for guests.

The studio at dusk, its library wall glowing
The studio at dusk, its library wall glowing
The guest cottage porch facing the lake
The guest cottage porch facing the lake
The whole compound from above in autumn
The whole compound from above in autumn

How it came together

I described the house, and Opus built it as a 3D model in the browser, with a real sun for 45°N and four seasons. From there it snowballed: photoreal renderings, a Blender scene rendered on my desktop's GPU, a bake-off between five AI video models, and finally a website with its own domain, bought from the command line.

It was some of the most fun I've had on a computer in a long time.

Take the tour at onsenlakehouse.com.