TWO-FAMILY HOUSE, 1986-1989

Pullach, Germany

Herzog + Partners

Description

Despite its High-Tech look of glass on laminated wood frame with steel tie cross bracing, this house has its beginnings in the traditional Alpine timber frame barn. Like its vernacular precedent, the Pullach house starts with an elegantly small substructure and cantilevers out­ward, like Eames House, at each successive upper level. The roof becomes a huge overhanging form in compar­ison to the thin proportions of its base. A relatively small and well-protected structure rests beneath the sheltering eaves.

The vernacular barn uses this outwardly cascading form defensively to keep its wood frame and rough board cladding dry and covered. Structurally, the scheme pro­vides an economy of support and cantilevered spans. Thomas Herzog acknowledges this as a formally appropri­ate beginning point and then opens up a series of complex interactions with the climate via technical components and Modernist ambitions. Glass is used wherever possible, then solar collector panels are strategically integrated as insulated wall wherever privacy dictates an opaque barri­er. There is an exposed industrial wood structure, a galva­nized metal screen for climbing summer vines on the south, and a corrugated metal roof that turns to glass beyond the exterior wall line to become a broad and trans­parent rain canopy.

TABLE 9.7 Fact Sheet
Project	Building Name Client City Lat/Long/Elev	Two-Family House Private Pullach, Germany 48.13 N 11.70 E, 1736 ft (529 m)
Team	Architect Engineer Energy	Thomas Herzog, Michael Volz, Michael Streib Structure: Jullus Natterer Fraunhofer Institute for Energy Systems, Freiburg
General	Time Line Floor Area Occupants Cost Stories Plan	1986-1989. 2475 ft2 (230 m2) including basement of 642 ft2 (59.6 m2). Two families. Not available. Two plus partial basement. Pavilion-style long rectangle, one room deep with perimeter circulation.
Site	Site Description Parking, Cars	Open meadow to south with trees to north. Two-car covered parking.
Structure	Foundation Vertical Members Horizontal Spans	Basement with pier and beam. Laminated timber columns in 5.9 in. x 5.9 in. (150 x 150 mm) and 2.0 in. x 5.9 in. (60 x 150 mm) sizes. Laminated wood beams at 11.8 ft (360 cm) centers across the long east-to-west axis.
Envelope	Glass and Glazing Skylights Cladding Roof	Double glazing with laminated inner lites. Sloped glazing at second-story exterior wall on north and south. 6.0 in. (150 mm) insulation clad on both faces with cementitious chipboard. Corrugated metal roof with laminated glass overhanging eaves.
HVAC	Equipment Cooling Type Distribution Duct Type Vertical Chases	Radiant heating from boiler in basement. None. Radiant heat with heat recovery ventilation. Exposed round metal duct at second story. Central core of 11.8 in. (300 mm) reserved for services.
Interior	Partitions Finishes Vertical Circulation Lighting	Wood frame. Exposed wood frame, glass, and gypsum board. Stairs. Daylighting and task lamps.

Corrugated metal roof with laminated glass Figure 9.22 Anatomical section.

		Jan.	Feb.	Mar.	Apr.	May	June	July	Aug.	Sept.	Oct.	Nov.	Dec.	Year
	Degree-Days Heating	1073	937	780	612	347	188	92	100	236	532	810	1006	6701
Temperature	Degree-Days Cooling	0	0	0	0	1	16	51	50	9	0	0	0	130
Extreme High	63	70	74	80	86	93	97	95	86	79	66	69	97
Normal High	36	38	48	53	63	68	72	73	66	55	44	38	55
Normal Average	30	32	40	45	54	59	64	63	57	48	38	33	47
Normal Low	24	25	32	36	44	50	54	54	48	40	32	27	39
	Extreme Low	-16	-9	4	21	27	36	39	39	32	21	6	-6	-16
	Dew Point	26	26	32	35	44	50	53	53	49	42	33	28	39
Humidity	Max % RH	88	90	87	86	84	85	84	89	91	92	90	89	88
Min % RH	80	74	62	57	55	58	55	55	61	71	80	81	66
% Days with Rain	47	37	51	63	68	73	64	62	55	57	54	49	56
	Rain Inches	2	2	2	3	4	5	5	4	3	2	2	2	37
Sky	% Overcast Days	38	33	29	28	22	22	17	16	19	28	35	37	27
% Clear Days	10	15	11	11	10	6	12	16	14	12	9	8	11
Wind	Prevailing Direction	WSW	WSW	WSW	WSW	E	WSW	WSW	WSW	WSW	WSW	WSW	WSW	WSW
Speed, Knots	14	12	12	10	7	9	9	8	9	10	12	13	10
Percent Calm	5	5	3	2	3	3	4	5	5	5	5	4	4
	Rain	14	11	15	19	21	22	19	19	17	17	16	15	205
Days Observed	Fog	17	19	15	12	11	12	10	15	17	20	18	16	182
Haze	2	7	7	4	3	2	2	4	5	4	2	1	44
Snow	15	14	10	8	1	0	0	0	0	1	9	13	69
Hail	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1
Freezing Rain	2	1	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	1	1	5
	Blowing Sand	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0

table 9.8 Normal Climate Data for Pullach

Program

Client and Brief

The client for this project requested a two-family house in wood frame. Emphasis on energy efficiency and moderate construction cost were also given as criteria. No other information has been made public.

Site

The site occupies a long east-to-west strip of land bor­dered on the north by large evergreen trees. The rest of the site is open.

Climate

Pullach is a southside suburb of Munich and is well described by the larger city’s climate data. The general region, Southern Bavaria, lies in the south catchment of the Danube River. Pullach specifically is 40 miles north of the Austrian border, a great barrier formed by the north face of the Alps mountain range. The climate is character­ized by cool, temperate weather and a degree of inland continentality. Conditions are generally mild but quite variable from season to season and year to year. The aver­age daily high in August is 73°F, and the average daily low in January is 30°F. Cold weather often coincides with long periods of low, gray, overcast skies; there are only 55 hours of sun in the month of December and 28 in all of January.

A degree-day ratio of 6701 heating to 130 cooling gen­eralizes the temperate, cool conditions of Munich. The cli­mate resembles that of Chicago, Illinois. Measurable rainfall occurs on more than half of the annual days as does fog. There is no dry season, and April through August are the wettest months in both frequency and total precip­itation. From November to April there are normally 69

30

25

JAN FEB MAR APR MAY JUN JLY AUG SEP OCT NOV DEC

RAIN SNOW –Ж BLOWING SAND

FOG HAIL

HAZE – FREEZING RAIN

Figure 9.24 Climate analysis graphics.

days of snowfall, corresponding with the months when normal daily low temperatures are below freezing. Clear weather occurs on about 11 percent of annual days with no clear relationship to temperature. Winds are generally from the WSW and calm only 4 percent of the time. Summer breezes are particularly generous.

Intention

Design Team

Thomas Herzog practices architecture from a strong aca­demic and research base. After completing a diploma of architecture at the Technical University of Munich in 1965, he received his doctorate in architecture from the

University of Rome in 1972. Dr. Herzog became the chair for Design and Building Technology at the Technical University of Darmstadt in 1986 and chair for Design and Building Construction at the Technical University of Munich in 1993. Along the way, he has worked for the European Commission, the policy initiative arm of the European Union, and championed solar architecture at several other European organizations. His more recent work includes the Wikahn Furniture Factory (1992), Linz Design Center (1993), Expo Hall 26 at the Hanover Trade Fair (1996), and a collaboration with Sir Norman Foster for a solar village at Regensburg, Germany (1998) for the European Commission.

Herzog’s work has been a continuing series of part­nerships and collaborations. He approaches each project

Dry-Bulb Temperature, °F Figure 9.25 Bin data distribution for Munich. Concentric areas of graph indicate the number of hours per year that weather conditions normally occur in this climate. Similar to elevation readings on topographic maps, highest frequency occurrences of weather are at the center peaks of the graph. (Data sources: Engineering Weather Data, typical meteorological year (TMY) data from the National Climatic Data Center, and the ASHRAE Weather Data Viewer from the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers.)

as a prototype design for state-of-the-art technology, and this research and development requires teamwork. Since 1981 he has worked hand in hand with the Freiburg Institute of Energy Research, because he says, “no architect can ever master all the forces at work on solar buildings." He believes in the necessity and synergistic effect of multi­disciplinary teams. His partner for the Pullach House was Michael Volz, with assistance from Michael Streib. Structural engineering was provided by Jullus Natterer. Herzog, Volz, and Natterer have also cowritten a book on timber structures.

philosophy

The emphasis on research and development in Herzog’s academic pursuits find Modernist expression in his pro­fessional practice. He constantly experiments and seeks to apply the best and most advanced technologies to the serv­ice of his buildings. For him, Modernist architecture is still involved in the transition from the 1970s attitude whereby energy efficiency was sacrificed to achieve visual state­ments of material minimalism. Herzog sees the emerging role of Modern architecture as just the opposite—using new materials and configurations to exploit a building’s functional relationship with the environment. This evolu­tion is evident in his own career as well. After following in the footsteps of Frei Otto and publishing his much trans­lated doctoral dissertation Pneumatic Constructions, Herzog has essentially abandoned lightweight minimalist envelope solutions in favor of far more proactive and envi­ronmentally sophisticated techniques.

Intent

Specific statements about design intentions for this project have not been identified, and the architect has been care­ful to protect his client’s privacy. From the philosophical statements and lineage of Herzog’s practice and research, however, a few ideas can be identified in the finished building. Primarily, this building was to utilize cutting – edge technology, with provisions for uptake of new tech­nologies as they emerged into practical application.