Concrete made of Wood – The green:house by Bauhaus University Weimarby Christopher Waluga | 23.03.2012

green:house

On the premises of Bauhaus University Weimar the "green:house“, a "wood concrete experimental building", was realized in 2010. The building has been created as a campus expanding element under the supervision of Prof. Walter Stamm-Teske. Apart from the Faculty of Architecture and its Chair of Design and Residential Building, numerous university partners were involved in this project, supported by 20 partners from the industry, companies and professional planners, and last but not least the students.

Under the plain black shell of the four-story "green:house“ you will find 500 m² of floor area and plenty of state-of-the-art green technology, tested and evaluated within a period of three years. The service units of 80 m² each are held in a neutral design and can be arranged by the students of architecture as they see fit. Here, the power outlets coming from the ceiling panels along with a hook system, also attached to the ceiling, support this. They not only serve wiring purposes, but are also part of the exhibition system for works made by the students, for the lamps built by the professor and the students and other fanciful contributions created by the students.

Prototypical Material Deployment

In cooperation with Helika GmbH Reutlingen, Prof. Walter Stamm-Teske experimented with the ground-breaking building material "wood concrete“. Wood concrete mainly consists of wood chips and concrete as a binding agent. It displays outstanding structural-physical properties such as insulation and also fire protective characteristics.

Apart from extraordinarily positive thermal and acoustical properties this building material also features other advantages. It turns out to allow for an easy and quick installation and is thus very efficient and pathbreaking regarding its production process.

For the green:house project, the wood concrete has been pressed into slabs with a thickness of eight centimeters, which were then mounted on a wooden frame construction. Despite industrial prefabrication it is similar to a solid building construction.

Through this already green:house achieves, after the completion of the building shell, passive house standards and, after installing sun collectors and solar modules, it even reaches zero-energy standards.

Apart from that, inside the wood concrete experimental building by Bauhaus University Weimar, a ventilation system takes care of fresh air, the floor heating system gets heat from a surplus of energy from the neighboring buildings, and all windows have three layers and are firmly installed. Only required openings, such as the access to the second emergency route in the form of also three-layered casement windows, have been cut out.

"Final Goal of all sculptural Work is to build!“ (Walter Gropius, 1919)

green:house by Bauhaus University Weimar not only served the developers and industrial partners as a research project, but also was a hands-on experimental ground for the students. This way the project turned out to be a real-life area of application for more than 50 Bachelor and Master students at the Faculty of Architecture, just the way we know it from the historical Bauhaus idea. Closeness to real-life architecture was supported in this project along with interdisciplinary work.