Wood – a building material that needs no marketing
Hermann Blumer
SJB.Kempter.Fitze AG Planen + Bauen, Waldstatt, Switzerland
2012
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Topic
“Wood has the potential to become the building material worldwide, if we humans handle it intelligently. Wood is a building material that needs no marketing – it is known all over the world. What is needed are architects, engineers and entrepreneurs who can design and build with wood and so create products that serve mankind as buildings and art works. This lecture is intended to introduce people to the world of wood with bold ideas on design and manufacture.”
Hermann Blumer
Herman Blumer, a graduate of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Swiss Society of Engineers and Architects was born in Waldstatt (Switzerland). He started his career as a carpenter in Villars, Canton of Vaud, Switzerland. After graduating as a structural engineer from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology he worked for two years as research assistant at the University of Karlsruhe. His entrepreneurial activity commenced in 1971 when he joined the Board of his father’s company Blumer AG in Waldstatt.
In the following years he headed a variety of projects: in 2001 the Holzwerkstoffzentrum (HWZ) in Leibstadt, in 2002 the Boisvision in connection with EXPO. Since 2003 Hermann Blumer has been the CEO of Création Holz in Herisau.
Among his reference buildings are the Centre Pompidou Metz (Arch. Shigeru Ban), the Yeoju Golf Club (Arch. Kevin Yoon and Shigeru Ban) and the wooden façades of the leisure park at Brünnen in Bern-Brünnen (Arch. Daniel Libeskind).
Hermann Blumer invented and developed among other things depth hydrophobation (beech plywood with greatly reduced water absorption), spring ductile frames (adjustable rings for flexible elastic frame corners) and the X-Floor (concrete-wood- hybrid floor panels with load-bearing effect).
Wood has the potential to become the building material worldwide, if we humans handle it intelligently.
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