When the pigeons of kulmbach are cold, they quickly fly to the savings bank: on a window ledge of the main office, they are cozy and warm. "It is really that we take care of the heating of the birds in winter", board member harry weib jokingly confirms – and means a serious matter: the building in the fritz-hornschuch-strabe from the late sixties is pretty worn out.
What the layman's eye can hardly see from a distance: the windows are defective, the natural stone has decomposed in many places – and there is practically no insulation. The buror rooms heat up a lot in the summer, and a lot of heat is lost in the winter. "We were forced to do something", emphasizes female.
The result is an energy-efficient renovation of the building that dominates the cityscape and gives it a modern, striking appearance. The house is almost completely encased in glass according to the design of the architecture firm H 2 M. The kulmbach-kronach savings bank will save 40 to 50 percent of its energy requirements in the future. And the working conditions of the employees will be significantly improved. Cooling of the offices will be achieved by air-source heat pumps.
The savings bank is spending a lot of money on this project: "we are assuming net construction costs of 7.5 million euros", explains weib "this is how we get our building sealed quickly, warm and much better air-conditioned in summer." A forward-looking, architecturally and visually appealing solution has been chosen, and everything has been coordinated with the board of directors, "who are fully behind it.
Construction will start in march, and the work is scheduled to last until the end of 2013. It is planned that local companies will be used as far as possible. The architectural firm H 2 M is responsible for the design and planning, and the architectural firm drenske for the tendering and construction management. Three variants were weighed against each other in advance: two less expensive plans – replacing the windows and installing a dam on the stone – scored lower in the overall evaluation than the more expensive solution. The soundproofing, the visual perception and especially the pigeon protection had been unsatisfactory. The pigeons (weib: "it is not unusual for us to have 200 to 300 animals on the roof") no longer have a chance to do their destructive work with the glass envelope, which is easy to clean of pigeons.
And in the future the birds will have to feed elsewhere.