Pisé – Hybrid Constructions

The follow-up volume to «Pisé – Rammed Earth» continues the application-based analysis and presentation of building with natural materials. Instead of investigating rammed earth structures, Hybrid Constructions describes construction with different earth building methods, also in combination with other materials.
Based on an analysis of historical structures in Morocco, Southern and Central Europe, the book provides the knowledge required for current applications of hybrid earth construction – not only in terms of structure but also with regard to maintaining a comfortable indoor climate.
Projects conducted by students at EPFL Lausanne, TU Munich and ETH Zurich demonstrate what this can look like. In addition to this, structures such as the kiln tower in Cham, built with prestressed rammed earth, or the Hortus project in Basel – a timber building with a hybrid earth/timber ceiling structure – show how projects of this kind can be successfully put into practice. Research buildings by Florian Nagler in Bad Aibling and Munich show how low-tech hybrid structures can be used to realise modern architecture.

The focus is on the following questions:
– How can new materials and constructions be integrated into the urban fabric or specific locality?
– Can renewable raw materials be used to drastically reduce the amount of resources used?
– Can prefabrication cut construction costs so as to make alternative construction methods competitive on the market?
– Load-bearing structure, retrofitting the construction to absorb tensile forces.
– Low-tech instead of elaborate technical building services not only reduces the consumption of raw materials but also energy.
– Regulation of the indoor climate by means of passive measures instead of energy-intensive technical building services.
– Maintenance and dismantling

With contributions by:
Roger Boltshauser, Mirjam Kupferschmid, Jesús Vassallo, Salima Naji, Jasmin Kunst, Marlène Witry,
Hubert Guillaud, Camilla Mileto, Fernando Vergas, Thierry Joffroy, Julien Nourdin, Arnaud Misse,
Martin Pointet, Isabelle Brunier, Ernest Menolfi, Janina Flückiger, Felix Hilgert, Summer Islam,
Paloma Gormley, Arno Schlüter, Andrea Wiegelmann, Romain Anger, Laetitia Fontaine, Ryszard
Gorajek, Gregory Bianchi, Gian Salis, Rodrigo Fernandez, Laurent de Wurstemberger, Coralie
Brumaud, Yi Du, Daria Ardant, Guillaume Habert, Jürg Conzett, Jörg Habenberger, Tobias Huber,
Katja Fiebrandt, Michael Klippel, Tobias Bonwetsch, Götz Hilber, Oliver Kirschbaum, Florian Nagler,
Jacqueline Pauli, Tobias Fiedler, Stefan Marbach, Marco Waldhauser, François Cointeraux