Single Family Homes Munsky
In the midst of housing estates from the 1930s, an architect built his own home and an apartment building. The result is two buildings that at first glance look like settlement houses, but on the inside they have a modern and reduced design with a combination of wood and concrete. A special project that was also characterised by sustainability.
- Architect:
- Munsky Architekten
- Photos:
- Daniel Vieser, www.dv-architekturfotografie.de
- Location:
- Kandel, Germany
- Products:
- Granital
- Lignosil-Verano
- Concretal-Lasur
- Stucasol
- Brillantputz
- Innostar
- Innotop
- Silan-100
- Klassik-MW
Cool concrete meets warm wood
The small town of Kandel in the southern Palatinate is only a few kilometres from the French border. Here, architect Florian Munsky, owner of Munsky Architekten, has realised a special project together with his wife Saskia: a single-family house as their own home in combination with an apartment building. In a street where there is a row of small-scale estate houses dating back to 1934. The surroundings with lots of forest are perfect for the young couple: The train station and motorway are around the corner and the city centre with shops, restaurants and schools is within walking distance. "When I was ten years old, my parents moved with me from Karlsruhe to the southern Palatinate, so Kandel means something like home to me," says the architect, explaining why he chose this location for his new home.
A perfect match: Concrete and wood
The Munskys' new home in the second row consists of three cubes pushed into one another: two small cubes for the garage and office and a large central, two-storey cube with a gable roof that slides over the other two. The apartment building on the street is characterised by two cubes set one behind the other, each with a differently designed gable roof. With regard to the load-bearing structure of both houses, the builders opted for a hybrid construction, made of concrete and wood.
Florian Munsky explains his choice: "In timber construction, special attention must be paid to fire and sound protection, and the statics must be guaranteed. The material concrete helps with this. The combination of the two materials exposed concrete and solid wood therefore occurs more often."
The architect had the central nave of the single-family house built of cross-laminated timber, which are solid wood panels consisting of several layers of boards glued flat on top of each other in a crosswise pattern; the other two cubes are made of concrete. The concrete core is therefore located as a crossbeam on the ground floor. The single-family house was quickly erected within three days; the construction workers needed a week for the apartment building. The timber and concrete elements were prefabricated in the factory and then erected on site.
Sustainable and mineral protected
For the insulation and design of their buildings, the aspect of sustainability was very important to Florian and Saskia Munsky and they therefore decided to use natural raw materials and to work with KEIMFARBEN from Diedorf. They chose KEIMFARBEN's mineral ETIC system with KEIM mineral wool insulation boards for the concrete walls of both houses. After the reinforcement, the craftsmen finally applied KEIM Brillantputz, which they structured horizontally with a brush broom using the broom finish plastering technique while the plaster was still wet, creating a characteristically revitalised surface structure. The plaster was already coloured in the desired KEIM Exclusiv colour. After a diffusion-open foil, the solid wood walls of both houses were provided with a support and a soft wood fibre insulation board as a plaster base. The craftsmen blew cellulose insulation into the space in between.
The Stucasol plaster from KEIMFARBEN, also pre-coloured in a beige shade, forms the final coat for these areas of both houses. On the single-family house, a load-bearing system for the wooden formwork on the facade also followed. All in all, the large central nave here has a curtain-type wooden facade painted with KEIM Lignosil-Verano, a silicate greying glaze that simulates a greyed, patinated surface such as that produced by several years of weathering on natural wood.
At the same time, it protects the wood from wind, weather and sun. The builders also pursued the idea of sustainability in the generation of electricity and built a photovoltaic system with battery storage on the roof of the detached house. The house is also equipped with infrared heating and heat recovery in ventilation units. In combination with an intelligent control system and natural insulating materials, the house has a very low energy consumption and corresponds to a KfW 40 plus house, almost meeting passive house standards.
