A broader record drawn from the supplied project photography, held outside the current case-study list.
A home on a rock plateau in Faqra, where the reception has no wall on either side.
Minimal sliding · Concealed frames · High-performance glazing
On the Rocks sits on a rock plateau in Faqra, among formations cut by snow and rain over millennia. Karim Nader Studio designed it with Roula Assaf as a set of fair-faced concrete volumes holding the private rooms, bridged by a zinc roof that floats above them. EFS supplied and installed the operable facade, and is credited as facade engineer on the project.
The scheme works by keeping enclosure and openness apart. Where the volumes enclose, the roof stops; where the roof spans, the walls give way. The reception sits at the open end of that logic: a bridging roof eighteen metres long with the facade fully operable to both north and south.
That put an unusual demand on the glazing. It was not enough for the openings to be large — they had to disappear, on both faces at once, so the reception could be used as an outdoor room through spring, summer and autumn. Anything reading as a door frame would have undone the idea.
The site sets the second condition. At Faqra altitude the openings carry snow load, wind across an unsheltered plateau, and a temperature range that opens and closes every junction across the year.
The openings are Ponzio SL1300 minimal sliding, thermally broken, with aluminium sightlines of 30 mm. The rails are set into the floor slab and the head is carried in the roof line, so no part of the frame stands proud of the finishes. Closed, the facade reads as glass meeting concrete. Open, the reception has no wall on either side.
Insulated clear laminated glass paired with tempered high-performance double-silver. Aluminium sightlines of 30 mm. Thermally broken throughout.
The house is held up by concrete and closed by glass, and only one of the two is meant to be seen.
