The Innovative Maintenance-free House | Arkitema

This single-storey house has a floor area of 156 m2 and contains a kitchen / family room, bathroom and four bedrooms. It also has two mezzanine loft spaces and a mechanical room. The house was constructed using self-supporting modules in the form of timber box units on pad foundations. The floor of each box module is insulated with expand- ed foam / mineral wool, wall and roof areas with mineral wool. Module facades are clad with tough- ened glass. Windows and doors have been re- cessed under the overhanging roof. Floor surfaces, walls and ceilings are clad with wood, and interior walls are in plasterboard/drywalled.

In the case of the Innovative Mainte- nance-free House the goal was the same as in the brick house: to build a house that would last at least 150 years, with minimum demand for maintenance during the first 50 years. The challenge however, was of a very diff erent nature, as the house was to be built of new and innovative materi- als that still have to prove their dura- bility and reliability over time – or at the very least, the construction of the building had to be innovative. This points to the main issue: How to ensure the necessary precision in the
building components – precision is key to a long life span. Here the solu- tion was found inside a factory, pro- ducing prefabricated building com- ponents – in wood. The overall plywood frame of the house was pre- fabricated and transported by truck to the building site and assembled with- in two days, literally by means of a screwdriver. A wooden house was perhaps not the obvious choice for a long-life house, but when suffi ciently ventilated, wooden structures are seen to have survived for centuries in Denmark. However, as it is evident that a ply- wood house is not weather proof, it required a building envelope which is.

The whole house is enclosed in sheets of glass, on the slop- ing roof and on the vertical facades, protecting all degra- dable building components against rain. The wooden struc- ture also had to be adequately ventilated in order to keep it dry, which is why the house is lifted half a meter off the ground on stilts of concrete and why there is a gap between the plywood structure and the glass skin. The gap creates a natural chimney effect, sucking in air at the bottom and let- ting it out at the top of the roof. No complicated mechanical ventilation system is needed – natural forces are at work here. Inside, it’s a wooden box that follows the overall form of the house, creating a generously large space with views from one end of the house to the other. The inside surfaces won’t need any maintenance other than the occasional wipe, and installations are readily accessible for repairing or updat- ing, placed under a floor panel along the facade.