A Highly Glazed Home Connected to Its Landscape
The extensive glazing at Shards plays an important role in how the completed home is experienced. The principal reception space is dual-aspect, with full-height glazing and sliding doors opening onto the terraces and gardens. The lower ground floor similarly uses large glazed openings to connect the bedrooms and leisure spaces with the landscape.
This relationship between the house and its setting is particularly important given the site's former quarry landscape. Rather than creating a building that sits independently within the site, the design uses changes in level, terraces, planting and glazing to establish a continuous relationship between the internal and external spaces.
The completed house extends across more than 5,000 sq ft and sits within approximately two acres of landscaped grounds, including terraces, a pool and areas of wildflower meadow. The stepped external landscape reflects the angular profile of the building, reinforcing the connection between the architecture and its setting.
The project is a strong example of how specialist architectural glazing can contribute to a contemporary residential scheme where sustainability, structural performance, unusual geometry and visual connection to the landscape are all fundamental to the design.
Technical Details
- Triple glazed Keller minimal windows® 4+ sliding door systems with 21mm-wide profiles, including large-format two-track configurations ranging from 2.2m to 4.4m wide and up to 2.5m high, connecting the principal living spaces, bedrooms, terraces and balconies with the surrounding landscape.
- Large-format minimal windows® sliding doors including 4.4m × 2.5m, 4.3m × 2.5m and 4.2m × 2.5m two-track configurations, each comprising one sliding and one fixed pane.
- Additional minimal windows® sliding configurations including 2.2m, 2.4m, 2.5m, 2.6m, 2.7m and 2.3m-wide systems, alongside specialist fixed glazing connected to adjacent sliding elements.
- Frameless Invisio® structural glazing forming the principal architectural feature of the property, including an approximately 4m-high, 400kg outward-leaning glass pane engineered to project from the building and secured using bespoke steel fixing channels.
- Frameless structural glazing incorporating large silicone-jointed and shaped panes, including a 4.2m × 2.5m three-pane elevation and a 3.6m × 1.4m three-pane elevation, together with specialist glass-to-glass connections and corner-to-corner glazing.
- Additional shaped structural glazing and angled configurations used throughout the fragmented elevations, maintaining the frameless appearance across changes in geometry and direction.
- Slim framed entrance glazing incorporating a 2.6m × 2.5m entrance arrangement with two sidelights, alongside a 1.1m × 2.5m single entrance door configuration.
- Frameless glass balustrades to the balconies, maintaining uninterrupted views and continuing the minimal glazing aesthetic across the building's external edges.
- Bespoke structural glazing designed and detailed to accommodate the project's complex geometries, including specialist fixing, silicone-jointed and glass-to-glass connection.
Bespoke Architectural Glazing for High-Specification Homes
Shards demonstrates how bespoke structural glazing can respond to complex architectural forms, oversized glass requirements and high-performance design briefs.
To discuss your next architectural glazing project with the IQ Glass team, contact us today.
