Kindergarten Kastanienburg

For the construction of the new Kastanienburg Kindergarten in the German town of Landshut, the building owner and planner purposely opted for pored clay blocks for the walls because of their fire protection advantages. These are accompanied by effective climate protection all year round.

The building shell consisting of rendered single-leaf masonry constructed with high-precision units pays off both in ecological and economic terms. High thermal insulation (U‑value = 0.30 W/(m²K)) is achieved by an environmentally friendly method without additional thermal insulation thanks to a cleverly devised perforation pattern and the air pores formed as the result of the addition of sawdust to the clay block body. In the case of the high-precision blocks used, these pores result in low thermal conductivity (l  = 0.14 W/(mK)) for a masonry brick. The effective thermal insulation does not come at the expense of the walls’ load-bearing capacity.

The interior walls too mostly consist of pored, planed vertically perforated clay blocks. Thanks to their weight, the planed vertically perforated heavyweight blocks of the apparent density class of 1.4, with a mass per unit of surface area of 332 kg/m², ensure in 24-centimetre-thick walls the required sound insulation of at least 47 decibels in noise-sensitive areas, for instance between rest rooms and group playrooms.