KS* living space model
Sand-lime bricks are a classic part of housing construction, renowned principally for their stability and performance. One of the qualities demonstrated by these whitish bricks made of lime, sand and water that impresses the industry is their high load-bearing capacity. This allows not only for large ceiling span widths and slender walls, with the resultant gain in effective floorspace, but also for the exterior walls to be divided up into load-bearing, insulating and weatherproofing layers. Sand-lime bricks also offer great noise and fire protection and their water vapor permeability makes for a healthy indoor climate.
These days, however, what makes the material an interesting proposition for planners is not only its material qualities, and consequently the way that the different functions of outside walls can be kept separate. On top of this, the scope for keeping layouts flexible while using a solid construction method also offers architects new freedom in design terms. With this in mind, KS-Original, an association for the protection of trademarks for small to medium-sized sand-lime brick manufacturers, has come up with something known as the "KS*living space model" in cooperation with interior architect Nico Stammer and Redante Haun Architekten. "The basic idea behind the KS*living space model is to improve the quality of buildings by using a solid construction method, as well as simultaneously producing housing units for variable use in order to ensure that residential construction can remain both affordable and fit for purpose," is what Peter Theissing, CEO of KS-ORIGINAL, has to say about the concept. It means that even in the planning phase solid interior walls made of sand-lime bricks can be arranged in such a way that if the layout needs to be reconfigured at a later point only slight structural alterations have to be made. The apartments in a building can then subsequently be regrouped by floors or by subsections of a story by means of wall openings or by repositioning walls. The opportunity is therefore there, depending on requirements change, to allocate certain parts of a parcel of land to the redesigned apartments, resulting in new layouts with correspondingly larger amounts of living space. With this in mind, KS-ORIGINAL offers prefabricated "KS lintels" which can be placed at predefined sections of walls right at the planning stage and ensure that the building is stable enough if its walls are opened up. This means that any conversion work can be carried out sustainably and cost-effectively, because it is only the areas with the "KS lintels" defined in the planning process that need to be opened.
However, the flexibility achieved by the "KS* living space model" relates not only to the building’s spatial structure. Since all the outside and interior walls are made of sand-lime brick, it is no problem to attach heavy weights to them because of the material’s high loadbearing capacity. This means, for example, that the kind of advance planning of crossbars to which to attach fixtures and fittings that is necessary for drywall installation is not needed here. With this in mind, the inside walls are arranged by story and are loadbearing. Accordingly, even upper stories set back from façades can be realized with lime sandstone walls of identical thicknesses. With its KS* range, KS-ORIGINAL is bringing to market the kind of sand-lime bricks of uniform thicknesses that offers architects enough flexibility when planning and, in so doing, making sustainable housing models available for future generations.
