The Bruderwald hospital is one of three locations for Bamberg’s social foundation in Bamberg. The social foundation invests huge amounts of money every year, to keep the hospitals up to state-of-the-art standards. It also lays a large emphasis on the whole appearance of all the hospital’s outdoor areas, to make the patients stay as nice as possible. Last summer the visitor’s café was given a new terrace. The decks that were laid are ‘Rational select’, a modern and safe wooden plastic composite from the company Naturinform.
Bruderwald hospital Bamberg
Patio decks
Rational select in Titanium grey
Construction year
2016
Location
Restaurant terrace Hospital Am Bruderwald, Buger Strasse 80, 96048 Bamberg
The social foundation Bamberg combines acute health provision, preventative, walk-in and stationary recovery treatments, as well as living and life at an older age sensibly. The hospitals it runs are in three locations and together form a hospital centre. The hospital is also an academic teaching hospital for the Friedrich-Alexander-University of Erlangen-Nuremberg. The locations are ideally situated in the world cultural heritage city of Bamberg, and from its windows and patios the grand panorama of the historic town right down into the Regnitz valley and up to the Franconian mountains open up. Surrounded by parks the Bruderwald hospital offers the best prerequisites for getting better. The hospitals are part of a growing company, whose area is increasing every year. Parallel to the considerable investments in the field of medical care the operators have a close eye on the design and care of the hospital’s park-like surroundings.
The local garden building company Fösel from Eltmann-Limbach hasbeen very busy there recently. ‘In the last two years alone, our teamswere on site doing all sorts of different kinds of things around thehospital for many months,’ says Stephan Reuthner, project manager forFösel. One of the countless tasks the company was recently given by the social foundation, was to create a terrace directly connected to the hospital’s café.
The company Fösel Garten- und Landschaftsbau GmbH was foundedin 1976 by Kurt Fösel. In 2009 Martin Büttner took over the company.All the approximately 40 employees, six of which are apprentices, use arange of state-of-the-art machines for their daily work. ‘We work onprojects up to 100 kilometres away from our base Eltmann-Limbach,explains Stephan Reuthner. Our main focus is on executing publiccontracts, as well as on creating private gardens and greenery upkeep.The company is a member of the Verband Garten- und Landschaftsbau Bayern e.V., the Bavarian Garden Association, and is registered as a craft business with the Chamber of Crafts Lower Franconia.
Solid patio deck made of wood plastic composite
The contractee chose Naturinform’s titanium grey ‚Rational select‘ for the new terrace. Fösel’s team laid a total of 100 square metres of the solid wood plastic composite patio deck. According to Stephan Reuthner, they have already used this material to achieve excellent results, and it is also a benefit that the producer is so close on hand, as its headquarters are in Upper Franconian Redwitz a. d. Rodach.
The deck’s width of ca. 24.4 cm can be produced at a length of up to 13 metres. ‘We actually laid decks with a length of up to twelve metres,’ Reuthner continues. ‘This means that modern terraces and roof gardens can be realized quickly and effectively,’ he says, pointing out another of the material’s advantages.
‚Rational select‘ is available in four colour variations, as well as with two different surfaces. In this case the wavy surface was chosen, as it is just like a natural wooden surface. It is available as a solid deck and can be used on both sides, meaning that it is especially suitable for large areas.
High level of step safety
A lot of the visitors to a hospital’s terrace are not healthy; they are often patients, some of them who are not able to walk properly and need crutches, or are simply weak and do not feel safe walking on a different surface. This means that a terrace must have the highest slip resistance level. ‘Rational select’ is predestined for this kind of cause: In a TÜV Rheinland / LGA test in 2015, the deck’s surfaces were awarded high degree of slip resistance – R11 and R13 (according to DIN 51130).
And that has been proven again on the Bruderwald hospital’s new visitor patio. Throughout the whole of the last summer, the terrace was a popular meeting point for both patients and visitors to the hospital, who met up for a chat over coffee and cake – or who merely enjoyed the view of the surrounding countryside.
Download: Press release
Product information: Rational select