Wolf and Edelweiss Apartment Buildings, Andermatt

The Project
The two new apartment buildings, Wolf and Edelweiss, are located directly on Andermatt’s new village square. They were developed as a joint venture between Schmid Immobilien AG in Ebikon and Sawiris’ Andermatt Swiss Alps AG. The Edelweiss building features 15 apartments ranging from 2.5 to 4.5 rooms and two spacious duplexes under the roof. The Wolf building comprises 23 residential units: four duplex apartments on the top floor, and units ranging from 2.5 to 4.5 rooms on the lower floors. Since state-of-the-art documentation on shingle facades is lacking, the measures must be derived from proven construction principles of similar wooden facades as well as from past experiences, such as fires in shingled buildings or fire tests.

The Construction Method
Shingle facades are particularly aesthetically pleasing when they envelop the entire building continuously, without being interrupted by aprons or fire barriers. The question then was whether a fire would spread too quickly or «self-climb» on the exterior. The spread of flames depends on the dimensions and layering of the shingles as well as their deformation behavior. The following principles had to be observed: a perforated facade with windows arranged one above the other, no interior corners, standard distances from neighboring buildings, and non-combustible cladding on the ground floor.