2226 Emmenweid - no cooling, no heating | Dietmar Eberle

Good architecture stands for a hundred years, technical building services for perhaps twenty. The 2226 concept has become well-established regardless of the building task and the cultural context. The prototype was successfully put into practice in 2013 in the form of our own office building (Lustenau, Austria). The therapy centre in Lingenau and now the office building in Emmenbrücke, Switzerland, are further instalments in this success story. All of the buildings do without technical heating, cooling and ventilation systems. The basis for maintaining a stable interior temperature of 22 to 26 degrees Celsius is the thermal mass of the building, the proportions of the architecture, and a sensor-controlled ventilation system.

Echoing the volume of a historical predecessor building, a 2,815 m² office building was erected on the listed industrial site known as “Emmenweid”. The distinctive three-dimensionality of the plastered brick building embodies the natural feel of the architecture, integration of the contour lines helping to fit the building into the context. The layout of the floor areas is radical: the multipurpose areas span out between the eighty-centimetre-thick exterior walls and the core, permitting (almost) any configuration of working environments. “Emmenweid” demonstrates that architecture can make a significant contribution to sustainability with its material longevity and flexibility of use.