Modern Glass-Façade Villa

A two-storey villa with full-height glazing and a cantilevered upper floor, delivered turnkey together with the rectangular pool set against the building and the lawn around it.

What a glass façade actually involves

At this scale a façade is a system, not a set of windows. The fixing points to the structure, the thermal breaks and the drainage channels of the dark aluminium framing were all planned during the structural phase. Before fabrication started, the level and flatness of the slab edges were checked; a few millimetres of deviation cannot be corrected later in a system like this.

The cantilever

The upper floor cantilevers over the entrance elevation and shades the glazing below. It cuts direct summer sun while letting the low winter sun in, and because the façade under it is sheltered from rain, the frame joints are less loaded. The cantilever's own insulation and drainage were detailed separately.

A pool against the building

The pool sits directly against the living room glazing. In this arrangement the pool shell, the dark stone coping around it and the building's waterproofing have to be treated as one whole; otherwise the problem shows up inside the house rather than in the garden. A concealed drainage channel runs between the pool edge and the façade.

Outcome

In a glazed villa the difficulty is not the glass but where the glass stops: the slab edge, the underside of the cantilever and the pool boundary. All three were settled during the structural phase, so the finishing trades ran without rework. See our residential and villa construction page or request a quotation for your own site.