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Benny Gasser
Developing sustainably beautiful buildings
Benny Gasser is a prominent figure in the field of sustainable architecture, known for creating aesthetically pleasing and environmentally friendly buildings. With a focus on visionary design and sustainability, Gasser Architects prioritizes the well-being of future building occupants. The unique blend of shapes, colors, and materials in Gasser's creations gives them a distinctive identity, while optimizing natural light flow through spacious windows.
Highlights
Increasing energy efficiency in a home reform in the Albis region (Zurich)
When buying an existing home from the eighties and later it is often the case that the structure of the house is stable and without major wall cracks. It was in this period, when both architects and builders increased the use of concrete and the relevant steel reinforcement which led to a better quality of the load-bearing walls and floors.
This was the case in the Albis34 project where together with the client we decided among much reform work to modernize the heating and the windows too to increase the overall energy efficiency of the building. As in most houses of this age, there was an oil heating and radiators in place. Radiators are today not any more the standard and have some notable disadvantages compared to an underfloor heating:
- To achieve the required room temperature in wintertime, the flow line of the radiator needs a temperature of 50 to 55 °C compared to the approximately 28 °C of the underfloor heating. The higher energy consumption leads to increased costs (ca. 500-600 CHF per year in a private home). - Since the furniture may not be positioned directly in front of the radiator, the lost living surface may sum up to 5 m2 in a single-family home. - Close to the radiator it is mostly warm, whereas when sitting a little bit more distant, people tend to have cold feet.
Since the floor height was in many areas an issue, we decided to mill the water-caring underfloor heating in the existing subfloor. The new parquet and ceramic floors were directly laid on top using normal glue.
In one of my next posts, I will present an even more ecological approach.
Rendering is a very helpful function in today’s architecture and architectural design. Decades ago, the architect presented his plans consisting of lines and a piece of paper. For more complicated details as bathrooms and kitchens, some views were produced for a better understanding of how the design would finally look.
In today’s world, many architects generate rendered views of important details. This creates a close to photorealistic view of the future bathroom, kitchen, or detail of any other important part of a building. The two pictures no on the bottom center and right are renderings made before starting the project.
The real moment of truth for any client, architect and supplier contributing to a building project is, when the work has been finished and is compared to the renderings made during the planning and design phase. The photos on the top and bottom left have been taken once the work was completed.
