The Ultimate Solution to Green Building

Solid wood is not only the safest material when it comes to fire, flood or earthquakes, but it also protects its inhabitants from all kinds of harmful, high frequency electromagnetic waves. It completely stops, for example, mobile phone frequencies. This has been confirmed by research conducted by the Bundeswehr University in Munich.

It has also been found that wood is best suited for the construction of rooms with the highest level of surveillance protection required as well. Thanks to this finding, Dr. Thoma's company has received a number of orders to build various structures for the German army.

The Forsthofalm Hotel

​This seven-floor hotel is built completely out of Holz100 – 100% pure wood. It proves day by day the incredible static strength of this natural, raw material. More so, there is even a huge swimming pool located on the seventh floor which boasts a open-air panoramic view of surrounding mountains. Starting from the day that its foundation was laid, the time that it took to officially open its doors only took 2 months.

The Filmarchiv-Austria

​This is the Austrian, state-of-the-art film archive, which houses 70,000 historical nitro-film reels. Fumes from the film erode rebars in reinforced concrete and therefore wood becomes most suitable for this purpose. This archive requires no external sources of electricity, and the constantly monitored temperature is at 3 degrees Celsius throughout the year as fluctuations are unacceptable in this case. In the summer, the facade warms up to an average temperature of twenty degrees Celsius from the outside and only a small, solar-powered air conditioner is at work.

To obtain such a result, the building has been modeled after a red ant forest anthill.
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The larval hatching chamber at the center of the mound is exceptionally resistant to variations in outdoor temperatures. For this purpose, a research project was created, which involved the best BMW specialists in engine thermodynamics. It turned out that wood has two completely unique thermodynamic properties. 1 kg of wood accumulates 2.5 times as much heat as 1 kilogram of stone, and the time required to change its temperature is much longer than any other natural, raw material.

​This is the Haramura church near Fukushima in Japan which withstood a well-known earthquake for its destruction. Moreover, it is capable of surviving typhoons of up to 200 km per hour. One should know that for concrete, it is irreversibly damaged once it passes breaking point. Wood, on the other hand, flexes, shifts into the elastic phase, and then returns to its original form.

​In 2012, Dr. Thoma's company built an energy self-efficient 5-floor commercial wooden building in Hamburg. This is ArcheNEO in Oberndorf, Tirol. A 6,600 square meter office complex, in which tenants’ leases state that they will not have to pay even a penny for heating throughout the year. The whole complex is built out of wood and not a trace of chemicals were used. Its temperature is regulated by heat pumps powered by photovoltaic batteries located on the roof.