Dwelling wsT / BLAF Architecten
Textual content material description provided by the architects. wsT Dwelling is probably going one of many experimental houses BLAF architecten is known for in Flanders and previous. It’s part of their evaluation to assemble in any other case, striving for high-performance sustainable houses that deal with the precise relationship between supplies, constructing, and context. As a result of the introduction of vitality effectivity necessities ‘EPB’ in 2006, thermal insulation in developing skins step-by-step purchased thicker, inflicting a shift within the route of delicate and low-cost facade cladding provides akin to plaster (putz), scales, tiles, textiles, and so forth.
That’s moreover recognizable inside the experimental manufacturing of BLAF. As for brick buildings, this meant an evolution within the route of brick tiles glued onto buildings as ‘exterior wallpaper’. BLAF seen in an early stage {{that a}} constructing approach with layers glued onto each other would consequence within the impossibility to separate the provides on the end of the developing’s life cycle, resulting in massive portions of non-re-usable waste. Moreover, by means of the design, this evolution ends in new aesthetics, with tectonic expressions to not be thought-about because the outcomes of stacking bricks, along with a recalibrated place of the architect within the route of the design of the developing elevation. BLAF’s points on brick design and constructing have led to a sequence of brick houses, exploring hybrid constructing and the occasion of the model new ‘Big Brick’. The wsT house is probably going one of many early houses inside the first sequence of three houses (btL, tmEK en wsT), by which the architects uncover utilizing the BLAF-brick 1.0 and the type of the shell inside the carry out of its autonomy.
The wsT house is positioned on a hill inside the coronary heart of Sint-Katherina-Lombeek, and close to the station of Ternat.
The façade is parallel to the street, efficiently aligning the doorway elements of the neighboring buildings. One of the best façade could be positioned parallel to the oblique (120 °) lateral plot boundaries. Connecting these facades to the rear/aspect wall creates an equilateral triangular floor plan. The facades are designed as tip facades, between which a sloping roof connects the rules. This creates a compact amount that integrates typologically and morphologically into its environment.
This geometric type and amount are realized in a wooden skeleton development, 3 tales, each with 3 completely completely different bearing directions, so that the collective areas revolve spherical the house on all sides. The open-constructed floor plans are polyvalent and completed. A brick shell is constructed throughout the timber physique, structurally autonomous on account of its type. The shell is constructed with the self-supporting BLAF-brick 1.0 and, together with the wooden insulated partitions, varieties a very high-performance shell for the house. Energetic, ecological, and spherical effectivity is a goal, developing logic a method and the contextual design is a finish consequence.
The house is constructed in a hybrid and traditional method, referring to pre-industrial developing methods, nonetheless in accordance with current and future necessities. The within constructing isn’t a typical timber physique nonetheless a prefab wooden ‘columns and beams’ development with mortise and tenon joints as a very versatile multipurpose development the place the partitions have been subsequently stuffed in with a timber physique. The outer constructing is a self-supporting brick that, after experiment and evaluation by BLAF, was produced by Wienerberger significantly for this enterprise: the BLAF Big Brick 1.0. This hybrid constructing provides an ecological and intensely energetically atmosphere pleasant outer shell, which makes it attainable to limit vitality demand. That’s met in a low-tech method with a compact unit from Pichler.
