When architects build their own home, they also become builders and designers. The 36-year-old Patrick Gartmann had it another a bit more complicated: He was also his own engineer for his single-family home. For his first work, he has developed an insulating concrete that allows a monolithic construction method and still achieves the required thermal insulation values.
Haus Gartmann is a textbook Swiss Boxi, which does not reveal its abundance of space and the staging of movement inside. The Chur native plays with materials, room heights and views with virtuosity. In the ground-level accessible from the slope side,
The architectural showpiece is located on the upper floor:
The sparsely furnished living hall, whose wall on the valley side consists of a fine, almost frameless glass film. The view over Chur becomes an unexpected view over the sea of houses that spills over to the opposite foot of the mountain. At night, the landscape is transformed into a fascinating panorama of lights with big city qualities. On the other hand, in the bedrooms, the architecture dictates what you have to see - Patrick Gartmann directs your gaze through a square perforated window up into the mountains to the Calanda ridge.
Insulating concrete masonry
But Gartmann's achievement also lies in the invisible, in the masonry. A conventional double-shell masonry consists of a total of twelve monofunctional layers, which are carried out by four professions. An exposed concrete masonry, which normally only pretends to be a monolithic construction method, is often also a double-shell masonry, which also requires complicated construction details and building physics restrictions. The "Leca concrete" mixed with expanded clay (clay balls foamed with air for hydroponic flower pots) came onto the market in the fifties and was intended to close the gap between double-shell masonry and exposed concrete wall as a monolithic building material. However, the Leca insulating concrete insulated inadequately and only achieved the required thermal insulation values with absurd wall thicknesses.Patrick Gartmann, who has long been interested in the idea of a freely formable house cast from a single material, developed a concrete in cooperation with the Liapor company that supports and insulates sufficiently. Gartmann's idea: The engineer replaces the sand content of the Leca concrete with glass enriched with air (expanded glass) and thus increases the thermal insulation value of the insulating concrete. The combination results in a cement-bound, crystalline clay-glass mixture that can be poured into all shapes and, for example, achieves a heat transfer value (K-value) of around 0.53 W/(m2K) with a wall thickness of 45 centimetres.
Source: Hönig, Roderick; Hochparterre: Zeitschrift für Architekten. Volume 17 (2004) Issue 12
[Photos: Thomas Dix] (https://www.dix-fotodesign.de/architecture)
☛ Publication in beton.org
☛ Publication in Baunetz_Wissen
☛ Publication on the mezzanine floor
☛ Publication in Liapor News
