Breathing Headquarters Gruene Erde | 2019

Scharnstein, Austria

Architects: terrain: integral designs, Munich, Germany
Design Team: Klaus K. Loenhart, Katharina Hengel, Claudia Pittino
Client: Grüne Erde GmbH., Scharnstein, Austria
Photographers: Jan Schuenke

GRUENE ERDE BREATHING HEADQUARTERS – A Plant-Based Systems Design Green Innovation Impact Design Biophilia in Design Vegetal Performance Carbon & Energy Neutral Eating the Sun Take a look towards one possible future: It is Plant-based! And petroleum-free, socially fair and ecologically sound. GRÜNE ERDE has specialized in designing and producing products that are driven by a most ecological, sustainable thinking and business practice – all that with a close look on socially fair trading and material chains of re-growing resources. The philosophy of our design matches within these given premises — this is about living and connecting to fellow humans and to our alive environment — to rethink given standards in design, material use, energy usage and bio-climatic design of large structures. How can we think it all together? Plant-Powered Systems Design We answer in designing an entire ecosystem. A systems design approach that introduces breathing into buildings. A sensual and atmospheric space that is literally breathing in oxygen originating from its vegetated courtyards. Plant-performance is providing fresh clean air and oxygen to breathe, while cooling all spaces and fully substituting conventional climate machines. A design that is 99% petroleum-free and powered by renewable energy from 100% on-site resources. The end of air-conditioning as we know it and the beginning for a new kind of co-habitation on our planet Earth. Bio-Climatic and Sensual Like inverted clearings in a forest, the interior landscape of the new GRÜNE ERDE headquarters is structured by thirteen patios allowing daylight to impact our way we sensually experience our daily working and living environment. Here, individual plant communities of nine Austrian living forest ecotypes provide oxygen and microclimate, sensual experiences and great comfort, for people, flora and fauna to thrive. Green Innovation At the Breathing Headquarters of Gruene Erde, for the first time, large-scale "climatic and atmospheric plant performance" will be applied for the climate, ventilation and cooling concept, based on our concept for the Austrian Pavilion 2015 in Milan. In the process, extensive building services equipment will be replaced by forest-plant-communities and their performance. Different Austrian micro-forest ecotopes thrive in 13 courtyards and unfold their climatic and atmospheric “plant-performance.” With this terminology we aim to describe what the courtyards and their vegetation actively "do". The plant communities are creating a microclimate, provide natural, living light and provide air and fresh oxygen for the entire ventilation. In this way, the atriums actually allow the building to breathe in and out organically. Instead of using air conditioning systems, the plant communities produce cool air when needed and oxygen to breathe in their climate performance! Thus the courtyards stand to each other in a certain room-climatic relationship. Together with air-conditioning technicians, the simulation was used to determine how much air-space each plant community can breathe, and from this, the size, number and density of the plantations were determined.