Durst HQ

Ergodomus was commissioned to design the engineered timber façade of the new main headquarters building of the Italian company ‘Durst’.

Once again, timber proved to be the most cost-effective solution to go for. This time, in fact, it has been the chosen material for the Durt’s headquarter’s façade being less expensive than other structural façade materials whilst also guaranteeing the dimensional stability of the design’s curvature and locking in more than 140 tonnes of atmospheric CO2.

In this project, CLT is one of the main components of a hybrid construction where the main structure is made of concrete, the building’s auditorium from steel, and its undulating façade from CLT. The outer surface of this innovative engineered timber wall is faced with bespoke white panels.

The complex geometries involved in accommodating more than 400 different windows (with no 90° angles!) in the undulating surface required very precise machining of more than 1300 sq.m. of CLT. The design solution utilized a sophisticated BIM workflow using Rhinoceros + Grasshopper, Tekla (for steel), AutoCAD, and HSBcad, with Ergodomus evolving a way to import “baked” Rhino files into HSBcad without losing information. The files were then exported to CNC cutting machines.
The completed, complex façade is an outstanding example of WYDIWYG: What You Draw Is What You Get.