Commercial · Reference design C-04
Sales Galleries & Model Homes
One long low building under a deep roof, with the development model inside the glass where the road can see it. A modular sales gallery, made on your site and made again on the next.
Decision Rooms
Four decisions that shape the sale
The corner
Which corner the glass turns, and what stands behind it
The glazing wraps one corner of this building and everything inside is arranged to be seen through it. Point that corner at your approach road and the development model is on show to every car that passes. Point it at the site instead and a visitor at the model looks up at the land. You cannot have both, and the plan is otherwise identical.
Both corner orientations can be set on one plan and compared on one elevation, because this is the decision on the project that cannot be revisited once the base is out. The model table, the seating and the selection wall all rotate with it. What does not change is a single dimension, a single panel or a single column.
Model or home
A scale model inside, or a furnished home beside it
Some campaigns sell from a model of the whole development, some from a furnished home a buyer can walk through, and the strongest sell from both. The gallery holds the model comfortably. A model home is a second building on the same plot, drawn to the same frame and finished as the flats will be. Deciding this fixes how much ground you need.
Open or closed
Where a buyer chooses finishes and where they sign
Material selection can happen at an open wall in the middle of the floor, which looks generous and hurries nobody, or behind a door, where one couple takes an hour undisturbed and nobody watches them do it. Your sales head knows which of the two loses fewer bookings on a busy Sunday.
The next site
Whether this gallery is drawn to move on
This building exists for one campaign and is meant to serve the next. It is bolted and screwed rather than poured and laid, and it comes down as flat component sets to be assembled again on the following site. Draw it that way from the start: the joints, the services and the base are all detailed differently when a second assembly is expected.
Drawn to move, the base counts as its own job on every site, the services break at a defined point, and the panel joints are set out to be undone rather than sealed shut. Drawn to stay, none of that applies and the detailing is simpler. Neither is wrong. What is expensive is deciding after the linings are closed on the first site.
Arrival under the deep roof
The drive brings you along the length of the building and the roof arrives first. It is a shallow plane with a fine dark edge, carried on slim round columns that stand outside the glass, and it oversails far enough that you are under cover for the last several paces. In monsoon, that is the difference between a visit and a cancelled appointment.
The corner is the whole composition. Full-height glass turns it, and inside, lit and raised on its own plinth, stands the model of the development. A driver passing at speed gets one glance and understands exactly what is being sold here. That is a rare thing for a building to do and it is why the corner sits where it does.
Around the corner the elevation settles into its parts: a broad pier of coarse-textured stone-look panel, a bay of dark ribbed metal, and framed glazing between them, all on one joint grid. The terrace runs out from the base as a low stone-look platform, with a shallow flight of steps and a level route arriving at the same threshold.
Walk the long elevation
Along the long elevation the structure is plain to read. Steel members carry the roof to the columns; manufactured panels are screwed to the frame and meet at an even dry joint. Every vertical line on the elevation is a frame line or a panel line. Nothing is laid, cast or plastered on site, and there is no mortar joint on the building.
The columns stand outside the glass rather than in it, which is why the glazing can run so long without interruption and why the corner can be glass at all. Each column meets the terrace on a flat plate you can see, bolted rather than buried, because a bolted plate is what lets this building be taken apart without breaking it.
The dark ribbed bay is a manufactured metal panel in the same frame as the flat ones, turned to give the long wall a change of texture where the plan needs no window. The coarse pier is a panel too. Both are dry-fixed, both land on the joint grid, and neither is stone or masonry in anything but appearance.
Inside, around the model
You come in beside the model rather than behind it, so the first thing in view is the development from the angle the brochure uses. The floor is kept clear the whole way round the model, because that clearance is what lets a family walk it, stop on the side they care about, and talk over it without standing in anybody’s way.
The selection wall takes the solid flank, which is the only wall in the building without daylight problems. Samples sit at a height where a person can put a hand on them, the lighting above is even rather than dramatic, and a stone chosen there will look the same in the flat. Flattering light on a sample is a complaint six months later.
The rooms where a booking is written sit deep in the plan behind doors that shut: two people, a table, a screen, and quiet. Keeping them off the glazed face protects both the conversation and the elevation, and they open back onto the model floor so nobody is walked past a waiting family on the way out.
The model table under the glazed corner, and the selection wall behind it
C01
A column meets the terrace; the roof edge meets the stone-look pier
The plinth and the terrace
The terrace is a low platform of stone-look paving panels, wide enough to hold a group waiting for a car and shallow enough to step up in one movement. It reads as the base of the building rather than as a path attached to it. The steps and the level route arrive together, so no visitor is sent round the side.
Under the platform edge runs a fine shadow gap. It keeps splashback off the panel in heavy rain, it lets the ground outside be finished last and to your levels, and it gives the whole building the line that makes it look set down rather than grown out of the plot. Small detail, and it is the one that makes photographs work.
The terrace also does the work no drawing shows: it is where people stand and talk after an appointment, and where a queue forms on a launch morning. It is drawn a size larger than a threshold needs to be, deliberately, and the planting is held back off it in low beds at the edge so nothing narrows it when the building is busy.
The buyer’s folio
The developer’s gallery folio
Written for the sales head who will run a campaign out of this building, and for the project manager who has to get it standing before the announcement. Four chapters: the roof, the model floor, the method, and the handover.
01The roof, and the corner beneath itWhat a deep oversailing roof does for a building that has to work in the rain and be photographed in it.
Look up at the soffit and it is warm, lined and lit — wood-tone anodised aluminium rather than timber, because timber on the outside of a building is a maintenance promise we do not make. That warm plane is what a buyer standing under it photographs, and it reads the same at the end of a campaign as it did at the launch.
One glance from a passing car, and a driver understands what is being sold here.
This building is not the marketing office, which is where your team sits and works through the campaign. It is where a buyer is brought, shown and closed. Some developers combine the two and it can be made to work, but the plans want different things: one is arranged around desks and the other around a model. Decide before either is drawn.
In monsoon, a deep roof is the difference between a visit and a cancelled appointment.
IN SHORT — A deep roof on slim columns, a glazed corner with the model behind it, and a terrace to arrive on.
02Inside, around the modelThe model floor, the wall a buyer chooses from, the rooms where a booking is written, and the side nobody is shown.
Behind all of it runs the side nobody photographs: a pantry, a store, staff washrooms and the visitor washrooms. Those last are sized for a launch weekend rather than an ordinary Tuesday, because the weekend is the load that decides whether a queue moves or stalls at the door.
Flattering light on a sample is a complaint six months later.
No floor area is quoted on this page, and that is deliberate rather than coy: the drawing set for this design has not been raised, so any figure printed here would belong to a different building. The measure worth asking us for is not square metres in any case. It is how many people can stand around the model on a Sunday without the room turning into a queue.
Circulation on a launch weekend is the test nobody rehearses. Families arrive together, the model floor fills, and the route from the door to the model to the rooms that shut and back out has to work without anybody crossing the closing table twice. The plan will draw it as a loop for that reason, and the loop is the thing to walk with a finger.
The measure is how many people can stand around the model without it turning into a queue.
IN SHORT — A model you walk around, a wall you choose from, a room that shuts — and a loop that survives a Sunday.
03How it goes together, and comes apartThe frame, the panels, the terrace and the joints — drawn for a building that is expected to be assembled twice.
The specification names each panel and the finish it is made to imitate, and the palette family is assigned rather than chosen from a render. Colour may imitate stone, metal or fine-grained timber. Method may not: what is here is a screwed panel on a steel frame, and the joint grid tells anyone that at a glance.
A bolted plate is what lets this building be taken apart without breaking it.
Because this gallery is expected to be assembled twice, it comes to your site as flat component sets rather than as anything room-shaped: framing, panels, roof sheets, crated glazing, column sections, the terrace panels and the fit-out, banded and labelled to the assembly sequence. That labelling is what makes the second assembly, on the next site, an ordinary job rather than a puzzle.
Colour may imitate stone. Method may not.
IN SHORT — A steel frame on visible plates, screwed panels, a stone-look terrace — and joints drawn to be undone.
04What you receive before you commitWhere this design stands, the sheets that follow it, what we will not claim, and what the current first page leaves out.
The form is the selected design and it holds: the long low plan, the shallow oversailing roof, the columns outside the glass, the turned glazed corner, the stone-look pier and the ribbed bay. Its palette family is A — charcoal zinc standing seam with a white composite panel and brushed aluminium — assigned rather than read off an image.
A launch date is announced publicly and cannot slip quietly.
A campaign programme leans on the group’s record of sixty to ninety days once building starts, with each quotation tightening that window for its own project. For a sales campaign it earns its place because a launch date is announced publicly and cannot slip quietly. Treat it as the fixed point you plan the announcement around, and your survey and approvals as the parts still open.
No price, rate or indicative figure appears on this page or on any other page here, because a gallery is quoted against its plot, its ground and its campaign. Nor will you find a structural, fire, thermal or acoustic number put forward as ours. Those come from a licensed professional on your side, from your survey, and after your approvals.
A sheet you cannot be handed is not evidence.
Search this today and the results are modular-building suppliers, a kitchen retailer and a directory, and not one of them is a page about a developer’s gallery. What we intend to put in its place is a plan, an elevation and a section your own team can mark up, and a room schedule you can hold against your own launch.
IN SHORT — A selected form, palette family A, sheets against that selection — and nothing claimed we cannot support.
Questions to close before you commission
How does this differ from a marketing office?
No, though they are often on the same plot. A marketing office is where your team works through the campaign. A gallery is where a buyer is brought, shown the development and closed. One plan is arranged around desks and the other around a model, and combining them is a decision to take before either is drawn rather than after.
Can it be moved to our next project?
That is what it is for. The frame is bolted, the panels screwed and the terrace laid as panels, so it comes down as flat component sets and goes up again on the following site. Say so at the start: joints, services and base are detailed differently when a second assembly is expected, and retrofitting that is not straightforward.
What rooms do I get, and how big is it?
The functions are settled: arrival and reception, a floor for the model, a wall to choose finishes at, rooms that shut for a booking, and a service side. The sizes are not, because the set for this design has not been raised. A schedule and the areas arrive with those drawings rather than ahead of them.
How much of the layout can we change?
The interior is yours to arrange: model position, the selection wall, how many rooms shut, where the closing table sits. Fixed are the frame, the column line, the roof and the glazed corner, because the elevation depends on them. The four decisions on this page move the building; everything else moves the furniture.
What is available for our architect to check?
Today, the form of the selected design and the four decisions on this page. Thirteen A3 sheets will be raised against that design and none is drawn yet, so there is nothing to send. When there is, it goes to your consultant to mark up rather than to a brochure.
What is the building not responsible for?
Your ground. Bearing under the terrace, levels, drainage, hardstanding and the approach are project inputs decided with your engineer from your survey. We also put forward no structural, fire, thermal or acoustic figure as ours. The two figures we do publish are the group’s and not this building’s: a completed-project count above one hundred, and a warranty running twenty-five years.