Statement staircase lighting for St. James's Place

The challenge

St James’s Place is home to a FTSE 100 Index company which manages £71bn of clients funds. We were asked to provide a high-quality, sophisticated lighting solution for the main feature glass staircase of the entrance atrium in a new office development.

The architectural designs included a very tight corner radius, so the contractor had come to us specifically for our expertise in lighting curves. Because of the unique combination of mounting on glass and tight corners we had to come up with a completely bespoke solution in order to meet the requirements.

Clients and partners

  • Client

    Scott Brownrigg

Key project requirements

  • To fabricate specific glass fixing brackets based on architect’s proposal.
  • To provide a lit handrail at a radius of 1.4m.
  • To space brackets on the glass at equal distance and according to specific designs.

The solution

Architect, Scott Brownrigg's, very specific design required a bespoke illumination handrail, with bespoke fabricated brackets, fixed to glass and spaced at equal distances.

The non-standard structural setting: mounting directly to glass and with a tight 1.4m radius on the landings required a tailored solution, which was no problem for our experienced Garda team. Providing a seamless installation, we fabricated a bracket from solid bar to negate the need for any welding.

As it was essential to provide seamless light from the top of the staircase to the bottom, a challenge that only Garda (and our flexible LED modules) could meet, we ran tests to meet the radius which was tighter than our standard 1.5m design. To ensure a top quality finish we ran the handrail into the wall; concealing the power cables within the handrail itself. The alternative being to add a fixing plate to the wall.

The handrail was delivered to site in sections and our installation team had to manipulate the stainless steel handrail cutting it to fit the space, welding the sections together and then dressing back the welds and polishing them out so that the joins were invisible.

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