the what and the how

We have chosen two different styles for the house. One with an open horizontal wooden rear-ventilated façade. The other one with vertical closed wooden rear-ventilated façade. We left 3 cm between the wall and the façade, for the air flow. We decided to leave the wood untreated. This means it will change color with time. So we do have a living house, every day is different.

A rear-ventilated façade is a multi-layered exterior wall construction with non-load-bearing façade cladding that is attached to the load-bearing wall plane at a distance from it. The outer shell protects the building structure from rain, snow, sun, condensation and strong winds, but is not airtight. The cladding is designed as a facing shell with ventilation openings to allow moisture to diffuse from the inside of the building into the outer wall, as well as any unplanned moisture.

Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorgeh%C3%A4ngte_hinterl%C3%BCftete_Fassade

Open Horizontal Wooden Rear-Ventilated Façade

This façade consists of Rhombus moldings (wooden façade profile) mounted horizontaly, separated 8mm from each other. The moldings are made of pine wood. The horizontal mouldings were used in the east, south, and north part of the house. The concept was to separate the living space from the barn.

Closed vertical Wooden Rear-Ventilated Façade

The Barn was covered with vertical wood panels of 20cm wide, separated about 1cm from each other. The gap left was covered with another wooden panel of 40cm. The lower part of the Barn is actually a workshop. It is the only part of the old house that was left. We partly renovated this part as a living space. The workshop served as our home for 4 year. However, this was not insulated in the inner part. It was only insulated in the outside. We used rockwool as insulation.