Wild Projektentwicklung is part of the Max Wild Group and specializes in building land development, urban consolidation and in the conceptual design of innovative districts, energy supply and network infrastructure. “We buy building land, take care of its development and create a completely finished area, which includes the buildings and infrastructure as well as marketing,” Stefan Geiger, Head of Project Development at Wild Projektentwicklung, explains. “We give derelict buildings and areas a new future, our goal being to work with what we have in an economical, effective and sensible way.”
Wild Projektentwicklung does not limit its business activity to industrial parks. The company also carries out residential construction projects, and this is where the Massiv-Holz-Mauer solid wood wall system comes into play. “We came into contact with MHM manufacturer Mayr & Sonntag through a project involving apartment buildings,” Geiger tells us.
“During project development, we always take future market developments into account and look at the options to make sure we can build in a resource-efficient way. Wood is ecological – and Massiv-Holz-Mauer walls are the ideal choice in these times.”
Building material of the future
“There is growing ecological awareness among customers, and we want to offer them the right solutions,” Vanessa Veit, assistant at Wild Projektentwicklung, explains. Company Mayr & Sonntag from Legau/DE manufactures MHM solid wood walls using wood from a radius of about 70 km and is therefore the perfect partner.
In Geiger’s opinion, the MHM system offers many advantages. The wooden elements are manufactured without using any type of adhesive or chemical additives. The individual layers of the boards are connected with stainless aluminum pins (see box on the right). “With their lower carbon footprint, Massiv-Holz-Mauer walls outperform other building materials in life cycle assessments – even if they are demolished at a later time,” Geiger emphasizes. Wood also creates a better indoor climate. In addition, MHM walls protect residents against high-frequency radiation, and predictable fire protection naturally also plays an important role.
The price is secondary
“MHM walls are slightly more expensive than concrete or brick. However, since the walls’ structure is around 6 cm thinner compared to conventional ways of building, they offer an increase in living space with the same insulation properties,” Geiger explains. He is also convinced that the high degree of prefabrication, shorter construction times and the further coordination of processes help to optimize costs. “What counts is the innovation behind the MHM wall system. Customers are willing to pay a little more for that,” Veit adds.
In the past two years, Wild Projektentwicklung used MHM walls for as many as four construction projects with a total of 28 residential units. “We used around 1,700 m³ of wood for those buildings, which saved 1,700 tons of CO2,” Geiger says, who is visibly proud. “The MHM elements allow us to process the boards we produce in our sawmill in a sensible way, while storing CO2 for many years,” MHM Managing Director Rainer König emphasizes. Geiger is very pleased with the collaboration with MHM and Mayr & Sonntag. “Thanks to the well-thought-out system and the trained employees, we meet high quality standards in our projects,” Geiger tells us. In the future, he also wants to build multi-story residential buildings with MHM walls.
The MHM solid wood wall system
Massiv-Holz-Mauer wall elements consist of crosswise layers of softwood boards, which are permanently connected to each other with a special type of nailing. © Holzkurier archive
Massiv-Holz-Mauer wall elements consist of crosswise layers of softwood boards, which are permanently connected to each other with a special type of nailing. The MHM system enables companies to manufacture solid wood walls, and thus build entire houses, from dried boards. Each production line consists of three work areas. First, the rough-sawn boards are grooved and planed on one side. “This creates standing layers of air in the walls, which increase the insulation value by around 20% compared to normal solid wood,” Rainer König, Managing Director of the MHM development company, explains. Then, the so-called Wandmaster produces raw wall elements of up to 3.25 by 6 meters with thicknesses of 10.8 to 34 cm. In this process, the grooved boards are pressed crosswise and connected with aluminum grooved pins layer by layer. The joining is done with a Hundegger PBA panel processing machine. The MHM elements can also be manufactured in visible quality.
MHM walls consist exclusively of untreated wood and do not require diffusion-tight foils inside a building, which would cause unnecessary waste. “The solid wood structure and a special type of nailing offer enormous advantages. In case of fire, the nailing makes sure that the individual layers remain on the element for a very long time, which increases safety. In addition, the nailing is flexible, which has a positive effect on noise protection and its transmission,” König explains.
The MHM development company is constantly working on further developing the wall system, for example with regard to fire and noise protection. One of those further developments is a structural analysis software for fire protection which calculates the fire stress on one or both sides of the MHM wall by taking the smaller cross-section of the walls and the loads acting on them into account. “Also, we recently passed the burglary test. The Massiv-Holz-Mauer now has resistance class RC 3,” König tells us.
