OPENLY 50° Climate Resilience - Construction Diary, Phase 2
-10° in winter, +40° in summer
The Openly Valley Widnau Stage 2 is dedicated to climate resilience.
Further developments:
Solar-powered cooling system in floors and clay ceilings
Solar Slider: PV sliding shutters for shading and electricity generation, a new development in collaboration with Schenker AG
Nighttime Cooling: Airbox 2.0
More affordable, quieter, and—above all—plug-and-play. No more need for on-site installation or electrical design planning.Hemp-lime: U-value of 0.15 (Minergie P Standard):
Mass production of exterior walls on Cancret Materials’ new production lineLBD 1 clay ceiling system with clay on the underside. Cost-neutral compared to the box-girder ceiling used in Phase 1
Clay interior walls , a new drywall system featuring a 12.5-mm clay building board (available from Cancret Materials).
Eco-Concrete vs. Biochar: Concrete with the Same Net CO2 Footprint
Through consistent refinement and industrialization of our construction system, we are now able to achieve construction costs of approximately 925 CHF/m3.
Prefabrication Live: A Special Look Inside the Factory
While the basement of Gautschi AG is being constructed using eco-concrete at the construction site in Widnau, production is underway in parallel on the wood-frame wall panels, which will be filled with hemp-lime.
Basement: Concrete, Yes—But With a Clear Conscience
Pouring the floor slab: The mix, which included CO₂-reduced cement from Holcim Eco Planet, was supplied by network partner Sigmund Sieber AG specifically adapted for this application.
A “white tub” is almost impossible to make without concrete. From Openly’s perspective, however, traditional concrete—as an emission-intensive material—is precisely the product we want to reduce as much as possible. The solution: low-carbon cement (Holcim Eco Planet). However, this cement behaves very differently from conventional concrete during processing—the mixture is more viscous and requires a different consistency during preparation.