Chelsea Homes , a stunning St George, Berkley Homes project in Central London offers European-style urban lifestyle with tree-lined avenues and meandering waterways. The façade of the building had different exteriors using brick, metal and GRC panels and a total of 183 balconies of 43 different types. Sapphire worked closely with Berkley Homes and architects Scott Brownrigg to design and manufacture balconies for the various façade conditions.
The Challenge
The new glass-fibre reinforced concrete (GRC) fascia supplied to the balconies had wide tolerance, and it was crucial to design fixings to fix the precision-made balconies. Rob Cullen, Project Director at Scott Brownrigg says,
“We had a massive amount of people communicating very regularly and with Sapphire joining the party, they were a very welcome addition to the team. Credit to Sapphire for achieving the aesthetic, interfacing with the rest of the project and being an absolute pleasure to work with.”
Previous phases of the Chelsea Creek project included spaced-out structural posts with thinner, intermediate infill bars which transfer loads differently from traditional vertical bars. As this phase did not feature the same type of bars, the project had to be designed from scratch.
The Solution
The team at Sapphire Balconies designed innovative stainless-steel brackets to fix wide tolerance in the new GRC fascia, which had movement tolerance in all directions.
Due to the different style of structural posts included in this phase of the Chelsea Creek project, a new post & rail system was included, comprising a package of prefinished extruded aluminium profiles, easily assembled to provide a robust and attractive balustrade on the project. The post and rail system provides a mechanism to re-introduce glass and vertical bars to balcony designs, whilst also allowing the incorporation of alternative infill materials.
Chelsea Creek used the vertical bar infill post and rail system with a 16 x 16mm profile. This profile fits snuggly into a different base rail from the panel type, and the gaps between the bars can be filled with a VB Infill snap-in extrusion.
For more information on the Post & Rail system, visit our website.