Ribbon windows and an entrance door, Pincents Kiln, Reading

The colour decided this job. The unit was being reclad in bottle green, and the windows had to read as part of that elevation rather than as something fitted into it afterwards. RAL 6007 is not a colour aluminium windows are held in, so every frame, the door and the trims were powder coated to order. That is the part worth getting right: a near miss on a green sitting directly against the cladding is visible from the road, and there is no correcting it once the frames are in.

The openings are long. One ribbon runs 7.7m in a single line and the other three run 5.5m each, which is 24.2m of glazed opening across the building. Each is a single run divided by mullions, set into the cladding line above the brick plinth. The glass is laminated double glazed units throughout, and the entrance door is finished in the same colour as the windows either side of it.

The glazing reads as a band rather than as separate openings. Each run is a line of lights divided by mullions, the lower ones sitting above the brick plinth and the upper ones set into the cladding, so the elevation carries two horizontal lines of glass rather than a row of punched holes. The door is the only opening in the run, set into the brick return at the end of it.