Bronze Frame, Three Roof Treatments

Location: Gauteng · System: Solid Bay + Open Slats + Glazed Bay

Bronze-framed structure: solid bay set back, open slats along the folding doors, glazing at the end

The brief

A raised timber deck running the length of a house behind a wall of folding doors, with the pool immediately off it.

One treatment across a run that long would have been wrong somewhere — slats over the bar leave it in the rain, glazing along the whole length loses the pattern, and solid roof everywhere loses the light.

What we built

A bronze-framed structure that changes its roof as it goes: a solid bay set back at high level, open slats along the run of folding doors, and a glazed bay at the end over the bar and its stools.

The frame runs on through the change, so from the pool it reads as one structure rather than as two additions side by side.

our full awning range covers how it is built; the gallery has the rest.

Changing the roof, not the frame

The instinct when a terrace needs different things along its length is to build different structures. It is the more expensive answer and the one that dates fastest, because the joins are where everything eventually fails.

Keeping one frame and varying only what sits in it means one gutter line, one fascia, one colour — and the flexibility lands in the roof rather than in the structure.

The specification behind it

Single bronze-framed structure across the terrace
Solid roofed bay set back at high level
Open slats along the folding-door wall
Glazed bay at the end, over the bar
15-year guarantee on aluminium, 10-year on Chromadek®

Where each treatment belongs

A solid bay goes where you want the weather and the heat off entirely. Open slats go where the point is pattern and filtered light rather than shelter. Glazing goes where you want the weather off but not the light — over a bar you still want to stand at in winter.

Most long terraces want more than one treatment, and almost nobody is offered the choice.