I’ve previously written a blog around the subject of being influenced or inspired, this short commentary will outline an example of being inspired for our project, including the process and costs.

The oriel window is the one thing I pinned on Pinterest that’s remained firmly in the vision for Alpine and informed our window planning. The connection to nature and the concept of subtly projecting the building into the garden captured my attention and wasn’t a design detail I wanted to compromise on.

Within the original design of the house there was an almost floor to ceiling window in the dining room, soon to be snug and home office, which became an obvious location to have this style of window. An oriel window is defined as a form of bay window which protrudes from the main wall of the building but does not reach the ground. They’re typically supported by corbels or brackets, but in our case we modified the construction. The original floor level in our project, at the location of the window, is approximately 700mm from exterior ground level, therefore we chose to build courses of blocks on the exterior which would therefore support the structure of the window. In doing so this reduced costs of the cantilever support and internally achieved the same result. Another decision we made was using posts rather than having a frameless system. On the rear elevation we will have composite framed windows and an aluminium sliding door, we felt adding another style with a frameless window would be too many variances in finish, whilst it wasn’t a deciding factor this also reduced the costs. Once the exterior brickwork was complete, the window was fitted on top of this, with the cavity below floor level then filled with concrete. It’s now ready for self levelling concrete and the flooring will be fitted, as soon as this is complete I will be pulling up a chair into the window to watch the clouds go by with a rich hot chocolate.