A Wrap-Around Winter Garden Across an Open Corner

The brief on this modern house was to enclose a large structural opening on the corner of an open-plan ground floor, where the kitchen, dining room and living space all run into one another.

The left elevation anchors into an architecturally distinct sloping brick flank wall, and structural steel beams carry the upper storeys of the main house, which lets the winter garden wrap around the corner with no vertical masonry in the way. The entire front facade is high-performance bi-folding doors. Retracted, they remove the boundary between the living space and the patio completely.

High-grade aluminium profiles in matt Anthracite Grey (RAL 7016) give ultra-slim sightlines while carrying heavy overhead glass, with polyamide thermal breaks to prevent cold bridging. The pitch of the glazing bars mirrors the slope of the brick flank wall, so the roof looks deliberate from every angle. Roof glass is 6mm toughened either side of a 16mm cavity, argon filled with a low-emissivity coating.

Comfort is handled quietly. Underfloor heating beneath the tiled floor prevents downdraughts off the glass, chain-actuated vents at the highest point of the roof drive natural ventilation, and wind and rain sensors close them without anyone having to think about it. LED spotlights are recessed into the underside of the roof spars with all cabling run inside the profiles, so there is no visible trunking anywhere.

Three weeks from the initial site breakthrough to handover.