Other Cassette Balcony Applications

Application overview

Our Glide-On™ Cassette® balconies can be used in a range of applications as it suits specific projects. The strong yet lightweight aluminium Cassette® requires far fewer connections compared with traditional balcony methods reducing costs and risk of thermal bridging.

Continuous balconies and terraces can be achieved by installing our Cassette® balconies in a row without balustrading on each end. The balcony units are then secured together creating a continuous platform or terrace without the extensive connections needed for concrete or steel alternatives.

Inset balconies are also easily achieved with our Glide-On™ Cassette® system which, like terraces, require far fewer connections than traditional methods. Whereas concrete and steel bolt-on balconies require thermal breaks along the edge connecting to the building, our Glide-On™ balconies only need thermal breaks on the arms, substantially reducing cost.

Corner balconies can be achieved by combining two Cassette® units, securely connected at the edge. Corner balconies with columns can also be achieved using our Glide-On™ Cassettes® with the addition of a secondary piece to enclose the balcony around the column.

Corner Balconies with Column

Concrete balconies are both expensive and difficult, for balconies with columns, having various trades needing to be involved, and still being difficult to achieve drainage, and hard to minimise areas of cold bridging which need insulating and/or being thermally broken.

That’s why we’ve created a clever way of being able to Glide-On™ a balcony with a secondary piece to enable these solutions to still work around a column already in place.

And what makes it better, is that it’s still got the benefits of installers being inside the building, all preassembled in the factory, drainage prefitted, lightweight for minimal anchor requirements, etc.

Inset balconies

In architectural terms, an inset balcony is a balcony which is recessed into the façade or roof of a building.

Traditionally this would be a balcony which would have three sides enclosed with the building leaving one side of the balcony guarded with a balustrade. More commonly however, particularly in London inset balconies are used as architectural statements and often have two sides formed by the building and two sides with a balustrade forming a guarding.

One of the common uses of inset balconies is the corners of a building. This is often intended to break up the façade and add a feature to what may otherwise look quite a bland building. In London and the south east England particularly, the use of fins formed from cladding has seen growing popularity. On tall buildings these fins are often reasonably close together and the space in between are used as inset balconies.

Our patented Glide-On™ balcony system can be used for inset balconies. Contact Us to discuss your application and receive application specific recommendations.

As a specialist in the high-rise residential sector, Sapphire has regularly come across the challenges applications like these present, and with continual innovation can provide you with intelligently engineered solutions to minimise and simplify the interfacing challenges. Talk to us so that we can work with you in achieving a smart design solution.

Terraces

Architecturally speaking, a terrace is normally an external area guarded with a balustrade. You’ll usually find it located within the communal parts of a property development, traditionally being integrated into the podium, rooftop or garden areas.

Terraces in architectural terms are elevated flat outdoor areas in either a landscape or around a building, for instance, a podium or roof terrace. Their use as a residential balcony is most common where there are a number of apartment entrances, joining into one communal walkway. Where the architecture of the building steps back from the façade line of the lower floors, this forms a rooftop above the internal areas below. These rooftops are commonly used as a terrace for the floor above instead of a balcony.

Most penthouses are set at the top part of the building and commonly will have a roof terrace instead of a balcony. Such terraces are normally more spacious that other types of balconies, and are therefore often landscaped with the use of planters etc to give the feel of a garden.

In terms of their use as a balcony, they are typically long runs integrated into the building structure, but often subdivided by privacy screens or fins which form part of the building facade’s architectural voice. A series of cassette balconies side by side can be used to create a terrace, allowing a project to gain the benefits of the Glide-On system.

When a project has a concrete terrace we can also provide matching decking to maintain the uniformity of the project.