Wood construction & Facades

One building, many hard-working bees

LignoAlp – this is what North Italy's specialist for customised wood constructions is called. It stands to reason that such a company needs an eye-catching head office. It was established in Brixen – the sensational building was completed in a matter of only five months.

The best sustainable construction material

Since 1927 wood is the daily bread for LignoAlp, the only one that is worth considering and "the best sustainable construction material available." When it came to the construction of a building for their own employees in which they enjoy the feeling of well-being, in which they are creative and achieve their best performance, then, of course, only something very special was good enough. Particularly made of wood. "Wood is a natural and very special material. Wood spreads a comfortable aroma, and it is hygienic, anti-static and absorbs noise. In winter, it spreads a feeling of warmth and in summer, the LignoAlp building retains the cool freshness better in the interior rooms. Moreover, it is particularly helpful in resource conservation. We need less heating and less cooling – in this way, we have remarkable savings in cost and added to this, we conserve the environment, too", explains Markus Heiss, Marketing Manager at LignoAlp. The corporate building of his company has been certified as "Gold Nature climate house".

Lateral thinking in waves

The building is a mixed material construction made of wooden frames and plywood sheets made of spruce, which stimulate "lateral" thinking instead of obstructing the view. The manner in which they are used is everything other than dull or commonplace. This unique design by the architect Sandy Attia (Modus Architects) gives the construction soft lines that are equivalent to the movement of waves. Depending on the time, incidence of light and perspective, the appearance changes and a special effect of dynamism is created over the entire facade. In this manner, the building acts like a homogeneous "Monolith" made of wood and despite this has nothing heavy about itself.

"Monolith" and beehive

The only interruption in the harmonic "Wood monolith" are three elements made of superficially rusted but weather-resistance construction steel: the reception area and the two large windows on the third floor that turn to the surrounding forest. They symbolically combine the construction material wood with the environment and Nature. There is a structure concealed inside behind the homogeneous, wave-shaped (or corrugate) facade, made of polygonal elements, which remind you of a honeycomb and demonstrate that versatile and flexible manner in which wood can be processed and used. Nothing could establish the value of the lively construction material wood, which is not rigid and unchangeable, than this flowing construction rich in its variations.

Lively and permanently beautiful

It is particularly since the wood is lively and alterable that there is the threat of an appearance, which neither the architect nor LignoAlp were willing to accept: weathering. In order to maintain the beauty of the spruce wood facade over a long period of time, LignoAlp decided on using wood preservatives from ADLER. Finally, this is what the company also strongly recommends to its customers: Pullex Silverwood in the modern colour shade of old grey decorates the plywood sheets and makes them resistant to wind and weather, sun and snow. Pullex Silverwood preserves the wood in the long term and protects it from all these environmental impacts. Better still: Special pigments ensure, in case of weathering that a sophisticated and glimmering effect develops that reminds you of natural greying – but uniformly, without spots and without the wood getting damaged.

The professionals at LignoAlp know exactly what they are doing when they construct with wood, and what they need to do so that their houses remain beautiful for a long time as they are on the first day. This is how many hard-working and lucky bees would continue to fly in and out of this building in the years to come.

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