Besides the large windows, it is the brick façade that gives the exterior of the town house an expressive appeal. “Naturally, we also wanted to reference the immediate surroundings without the building fading into the background. So, in addition to glass, we used complimentary dark brown waterstruck bricks with anthracite nuances”, says Pedde. The Moana Eco-brick® building now stands out from the lighter façades of the adjacent houses. The bricks have a slightly rustic surface and textured appearance typical of waterstruck bricks.
But the brick was not only chosen for its appearance: the Moana Eco-brick® is around 45 mm slimmer than conventional bricks and so creates more space in the interior. “The Eco-brick® helped us maximise the available space”, the architect explains. “A depth of 7 cm instead of 11.5 cm doesn‘t sound like much difference, but it gives us around 4 m2 of extra space over the whole height of the building.” Furthermore, the narrow format reduces the CO2 footprint to 20–30 % below that of standard bricks per square metre of façade. This project used smaller quantities of premium-quality building materials to achieve an optimum result.