Generation house Mooseggstrasse

Joel Hächler at the inauguration

More than ten years ago, Elsi Reimann and Thomas Kaufmann got talking and laid the foundation for today's Langnau im Emmental housing cooperative. There followed visits to various successful cooperative projects, ups and downs in the search for a suitable piece of land, and planning. Today, the construction project is almost complete and the cooperative members will soon be able to move into their apartments. Three questions from the mission statement accompany the cooperative on its way: "Does it serve people?", "Does it serve the environment?" and "Does it serve peace?" Timbatec can readily identify with these questions. In our work, we also always ask ourselves whether our building projects are environmentally compatible and ideally suited to the people who use them.

The building

Those who consider the environment at the project definition stage usually opt for sustainable timber construction. This is also what happened with the Generationenhaus. In the center of the three-story building is an atrium as a meeting and access zone. Here, the caring idea and the non-profit community clearly come to the fore. To make this core zone possible, the surrounding balconies serve as an access and meeting zone. The pergolas serve as an escape route in case of fire. An electrobiological network minimizes electrical radiation in the apartments. This network is installed in the building envelope and between the residential units. The building envelope is also exemplary in terms of energy: the house has Minergie-P standard, uses solar energy via solar collectors and a photovoltaic system for partial self-sufficiency in electricity and heat. In addition, the architecture makes particularly good use of passive solar energy.

The choice of materials

The client's high ecological standards could be met with sawn and planed beams; glued duo and trio beams were dispensed with wherever possible. Only in the case of the large glulam beams and the wood materials used can adhesives not be dispensed with. In the end, almost half of the wood used is not glued. For all products, we ensured that processing was as simple as possible, thus enabling deconstruction. The floor slabs, for example, are made of a simple solid wood beam layer, supplemented with three-layer and OSB boards. The solid wood is merely dried and installed in its natural state. Thus, it can be used without foreign substances such as glue and paint coatings.

The beetle wood

Storms and prolonged dry spells cause problems for our spruce trees, because spruce forests affected by drought and windthrow are a paradise for bark beetles. The small beetle lives under the bark of the spruce and can, if the numbers are high enough, cause even healthy trees to die. To counteract an explosive spread of bark beetles, wood damaged by beetles, also called beetle wood, is removed from the forest. This wood has the same structural properties as conventional lumber and can be used without restriction as a material in timber construction. This is because the bark beetle lays its tunnels between the bark and sapwood in the so-called bast, not in the load-bearing wood body itself.

Nevertheless, beetle wood is often avoided because individual feeding tunnels are visible due to discoloration. Not so at Mooseggstrasse. Half of the solid wood cross-sections are made of regional beetle wood. This is sustainable, in solidarity with the regional forestry industry and in the spirit of climate protection. It therefore serves people and the environment.