Apartment buildings Wolf and Edelweiss, Andermatt

The Project

The two new apartment houses Wolf and Edelweiss are located directly at the new village square of Andermatt. They were developed in a joint venture of Schmid Immobilien AG in Ebikon and Sawiris' Andermatt Swiss Alps AG. Haus Edelweiss has 15 apartments with 2.5 to 4.5 rooms and two spacious maisonettes under the roof. There are 23 apartments in Haus Wolf: at the top four maisonettes, on the lower floors the apartments with 2.5 to 4.5 rooms.  

The Challenge

In both houses, the main roof was constructed as a carpenter's construction in wood with thermal insulation in between. Andermatt, which lies at 1450 meters above sea level, has long winters with lots of snow. The roofs of the two houses must therefore withstand quite heavy loads - around nine kilonewtons per square meter, about one ton.

Another requirement is that the roof structures should not be visible from the outside. They had to be almost completely hidden in the building. On the other hand, the loads could not be carried over the walls due to the interior design. 

Another challenge was the shingle facade made of larch timber on Haus Wolf. Because there is no evidence of fire behaviour, Timbatec had to carry out a fire test. In the civil defence training centre in Erstfeld, the shingle façade was reproduced at a height of five metres and a fire test was carried out under controlled conditions. Thanks to this experiment, it was possible to show the fire protection authority that the protection objectives for this façade were achieved.