Advanced Wooden Facade

The natural weathering (rain, sunlight) leads to substantial discolorations on natural wooden façade slats. Furthermore deformations and cracks occur due to climate dependent dimensional changes (swelling & shrinking) of wood. This heavily reduces the aesthetic value of the façade, finally demanding its replacement after a couple of years. Current wood paints are capable of reducing these drawbacks, but mostly they cannot preserve the wood’s natural appearance.
The façade of the HoNR living lab will be equipped with wooden façade elements that are going to be tested under natural weathering conditions. Before installation, they were treated with newly developed almost transparent coatings, providing color stability and hydrophobicity. This allows for overcoming the abovementioned drawbacks (discolorations, deformations, cracks) while preserving the high aesthetic value of native wood. Hence these new coating technologies significantly increase the lifetime of wooden façades, thus leading to a substantial reduction of the building envelope’s carbon footprint. Furthermore, the extended longevity of the wood façade heavily lowers its maintenance costs over the lifespan of the building.