Home wsT / BLAF Architecten

Home wsT / BLAF Architecten

Textual content description supplied by the architects. wsT Home is likely one of the experimental homes BLAF architecten is thought for in Flanders and past. It’s a part of their analysis to construct otherwise, striving for high-performance sustainable homes that deal with the exact relationship between materials, building, and context. Because the introduction of vitality efficiency requirements ‘EPB’ in 2006, thermal insulation in constructing skins steadily acquired thicker, inflicting a shift in the direction of gentle and low-cost facade cladding supplies comparable to plaster (putz), scales, tiles, textiles, and so on.

That is additionally recognizable within the experimental manufacturing of BLAF. As for brick buildings, this meant an evolution in the direction of brick tiles glued onto buildings as ‘exterior wallpaper’. BLAF observed in an early stage {that a} building technique with layers glued onto one another would result in the impossibility to separate the supplies on the finish of the constructing’s life cycle, leading to big quantities of non-re-usable waste. Additionally, when it comes to the design, this evolution results in new aesthetics, with tectonic expressions now not to be thought-about as the results of stacking bricks, in addition to a recalibrated place of the architect in the direction of the design of the constructing elevation. BLAF’s concerns on brick design and building have led to a collection of brick homes, exploring hybrid building and the event of the brand new ‘Massive Brick’. The wsT home is likely one of the early homes within the first collection of three homes (btL, tmEK en wsT), through which the architects discover using the BLAF-brick 1.0 and the form of the shell within the perform of its autonomy.

The wsT home is positioned on a hill within the heart of Sint-Katherina-Lombeek, and near the station of Ternat.

The façade is parallel to the road, successfully aligning the entrance factors of the neighboring buildings. The suitable façade can be positioned parallel to the indirect (120 °) lateral plot boundaries. Connecting these facades to the rear/aspect wall creates an equilateral triangular flooring plan. The facades are designed as tip facades, between which a sloping roof connects the information. This creates a compact quantity that integrates typologically and morphologically into its setting.

This geometric form and quantity are realized in a picket skeleton construction, 3 tales, every with 3 completely different bearing instructions, in order that the collective areas revolve round the home on all sides. The open-constructed flooring plans are polyvalent and accomplished. A brick shell is constructed across the timber body, structurally autonomous as a result of its form. The shell is constructed with the self-supporting BLAF-brick 1.0 and, along with the picket insulated partitions, varieties an especially high-performance shell for the home. Energetic, ecological, and round effectivity is a objective, constructing logic a way and the contextual design is a end result.

The home is constructed in a hybrid and conventional manner, referring to pre-industrial constructing strategies, however based on present and future requirements. The inside building shouldn’t be a conventional timber body however a prefab picket ‘columns and beams’ construction with mortise and tenon joints as a really versatile multipurpose construction the place the partitions have been subsequently stuffed in with a timber body. The outer building is a self-supporting brick that, after experiment and analysis by BLAF, was produced by Wienerberger particularly for this challenge: the BLAF Massive Brick 1.0. This hybrid building offers an ecological and very energetically environment friendly outer shell, which makes it potential to restrict vitality demand. That is met in a low-tech manner with a compact unit from Pichler.