St Martin Care Home, Herten

On behalf of Martinus Trägergesellschaft mbH, our Münster branch was the general contractor for the construction of a new building for the St Martin Care Home in Herten, with a gross floor area of ​​4,916m². The outer and load-bearing walls of the two-storey solid construction designed by Maas & Partner are made of reinforced concrete and large-format sand-lime masonry. Upon handover, the client expressed their complete satisfaction with the quality of the construction project and the fact that it had been completed on schedule and on budget.

Modern care in a bright and friendly setting

The founder of the order, Maria Magdalena Postel, famously said, “Educate the young, support the poor and alleviate suffering to the best of your ability”. She opened her first school in 1774, at the age of just 18. She supported reforms such as free primary schools and ensuring that children were raised in environments free of violence. Her successors in Herten also espouse this progressive approach to social issues. The senior citizen welfare wing of the Sisters of St Maria Magdalena Postel runs retirement homes, senior citizens’ residential communities, outpatient care services, day care centres and assisted living facilities.

The old seven-storey St Martin building from the 1970s was no longer suitable for modern concepts such as primary care, which is based on the needs of residents.

The completely accessible new building enables individual care in small groups of residents, rather than in large residential complexes. In addition to its 80 single rooms, the facility has communal areas that get plenty of natural light, plus administrative offices, a chapel with a gallery, and a canteen kitchen.

Completion on schedule despite unforeseen events

Perfectly planned and efficient construction site processes and the use of prefabricated parts reduced the construction time, so residents were able to move in smoothly and on schedule. The team had also successfully overcome several obstacles. In conjunction with the city authorities, they devised a traffic routing system that took the concerns of residents into account while enabling round-the-clock access to the construction site.

The uneven subsoil presented a special challenge. Originally, the building was supposed to be founded on a floor slab, but there was insufficient load-bearing capacity across the entire foundation area. After consulting with in-house structural engineers and the building materials laboratory, a cost-optimised foundation with vibro compaction piles emerged as the solution of choice. On top of all that, the site required extensive probing for buried explosive ordnance. The potentially hazardous points that had been detected were successfully eliminated in cooperation with the authorities.