High Home

ADLER means 'eagle' in German, and eagles always want to go high up, it's in their blood. The ADLER plant is no exception, and ADLER is naturally one of the participants involved in the development of the highest timber construction in Germany at Bad Aibling in Bavaria. Because one thing is certain: no matter how high the wooden house is, the facade must shine and requires high-quality protection, otherwise water spots and irregular weathering pose a threat.  

Timber Construction Without Limits
Twenty years ago, it was still debated whether three-storey houses made of wood could be built. Meanwhile, such buildings – even as rented residential property – have become commonplace. The fact that this is not the end of the road by a long shot is proven by the first wooden high-rise building in Germany, built 25 metres high by B & O Wohnungswirtschaft in Bad Aibling. Designed by the Munich architecture firm Schankula, the eight-storey residential building not only meets all the requirements for energy efficiency, noise insulation, heat insulation and fire protection, it also looks good with its modern appearance.

Thanks to the good properties of the building material wood, it almost reaches a passive-house standard with heating energy requirements of 18 kWh per year and square metre. For the warm water treatment and for the tempering of the premises, a solar system, a ventilation system with heat recovery and a connection to the woodchip heating system on the site are used. "Wood is anything but common in multi-storey housing and is generally not considered the ideal material for the urban environment, wrongly! With the project, we want to show that this can be changed," says Josef Huber, managing director of the timber construction company Huber & Sohn.

Construction In Record Time
The solid wood walls made of vertically arranged spruce woods were produced in the Huber & Sohn factory in Bachmehring. "We then erected the building from the prefabricated wooden elements within a very short time," says B & O project manager Jens Eitner. "It took two or three days for each floor – which means we can build an eight-storey high-rise building in the space of four weeks. That's just sensational." Production directly in the timber construction company enables a sharply accentuated facade with precise material transitions. Nevertheless, the typical, soft appearance of the rough sawn boards is retained. Even the windows were already installed in the wall elements by the timber construction company. The facade cladding made of solid wood is already completely coated when the elements leave the timber construction specialist.  

Wood Protection With Elegance
The coating applied on the eight-storey building in Bad Aibling is called ADLER Lignovit Platin and gives the high-rise building a touch of modern elegance. The water-based wood finishing transparent wood finish is enriched with special aluminium flakes, which not only ensure the unmistakable silvery shimmer, but also increase durability thanks to enhanced UV light reflection. Outstanding weathering resistance and protection against infestation by blueing and fungus ensure that the rough-sawn facade remains permanently beautiful. The look is reminiscent of natural, but evenly greyed wood. No style and design limits are thus set in timber construction – thanks to ADLER's high-flying adventures!