Bäckerei Moss, Aachen

The local architectural firm Plan und Raum was commissioned with the design, and together with the engineering firm IGK Krabbe from Osnabrück, they brought the client’s ideas and requirements to life, creating a modern, sustainably designed bakery with an appealing aesthetic. Construction began in July 2010. The entrepreneurs found the ideal site for the new bakery on Kellershaustraße in Aachen’s Eilendorf district.

To achieve the highest possible efficiency and cost-effectiveness across all structures in the future through well-thought-out optimizations, the entrepreneurs analyzed, documented, and reviewed internal processes and traffic patterns in advance. The most important basis for this was a detailed assessment of the building automation and technology, including the massive new baking ovens as well as the large electrical, heating, and water consumers. This also resulted in the construction project with clearly defined usage requirements: the client desired a modern industrial building compliant with food hygiene regulations, featuring glare-free, bright, light-filled rooms, and an economical solution for a production- and season-specific ventilation concept, as well as a separate smoke and heat exhaust system.

The heating energy required for the building is supplied exclusively through heat recovery from process heat and via heat exchangers in the exhaust gas streams.

The flat roof is designed as a warm roof. The roof structure complies with industrial building codes. The roof layer package consists of a single-layer, high-polymer waterproofing membrane (FPO), beneath which lies A1-class mineral wool insulation (d=14 centimeters), the vapor barrier, and the trapezoidal sheet metal. The roof houses the cooling units for recooling the cold rooms, fume and steam stacks from the bakery ovens, exhaust units from the ventilation system, and skylights with integrated smoke and heat exhaust ventilation (SHEV) function. The variety of roof structures is due to the production equipment.

A bakery, in particular, requires a high-performance ventilation system. INDU LIGHT carefully analyzed these specific production conditions down to the last detail. In consultation with the building owners and the design firm, the individual requirements were implemented in an optimized ventilation concept consisting of louvered ventilators in the facade and multi-purpose ventilators in the roof. Exhaust air is reliably extracted via the intelligent multi-purpose ventilators (MZL) from the manufacturer INDU LIGHT. The designs ensure fast air exchange rates and are particularly suitable for construction projects where exhaust air or heat needs to be removed regardless of weather conditions. Like the roof skylights, the upward-opening double flaps feature translucent polycarbonate multiwall sheets. As a modification to the standard design, the multi-purpose ventilators were each equipped with three side louvers for efficient, rain-proof ventilation.

A compressed-air control system—still commonly found in industrial and commercial buildings today—was not an option for the Moss artisan bakery. Compressed-air control means that the dampers and louvers in the ventilation units can only be fully opened or closed. However, the operation of the artisan bakery required flexible ventilation. For the new construction of the modern and sustainably designed bakery, INDU LIGHT therefore developed a system with eight individually controllable ventilation groups. These can be individually adjusted to the production process and the location in seven different stages via 24V motors and can be reprogrammed at a later date. In this way, the ventilation regulates itself during periods when sensitive baked goods are being produced and only limited ventilation is permitted, thereby preventing unwanted drafts.

The necessary control technology was supplied by Luxotherm GmbH in Halle. The intelligent control programming can be conveniently operated via touchscreen and easily monitored or tracked on a PC. The control electronics are modularly expandable, and monitoring can be decentralized.