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traditional stone building, which was very widespread in many Italian regions. Although
the intense use of concrete in the construction industry after the Second World War
helped urbanisation, it has left Italy with a plethora of concrete buildings and relegated
the use of other building materials, such as steel and wood, to the niche market. This
has obviously made “cement” the material of choice in the Italian construction industry
and has led to widespread specialisation, especially in the residential building sector,
where concrete was generally deemed to be the only viable option. The use of steel and,
more slowly, wood in the construction industry gradually had to find alternative, specialist
roles in the construction industry, to be able to compete with concrete, prevalently in the
industrial sector and the construction of sports infrastructure.
Therefore, it is in this hostile environment with a tradition for concrete buildings that
WOOD has gradually started to crop up as an alternative building material and this
happened only in the last twenty years of the last century. During this period, the first
Italian producers of lamellar wood started to spring up, which helped bring wood back
onto the construction scene and at the same time projects involving the use of wood as a
building material started to see the light of day.
Following on from this introduction, it is opportune to explain how Italian wood experts,
by which I mean the designers and few companies working in this sector, have been
able to overcome the prejudices for using wood in the construction industry.
In the last century, not a lot of resources were allocated to the construction of wooden
buildings. The buildings made were invariably of a lightweight nature, rickety, prone to
fires and were usually temporary structures not expected to last long that could be
erected in a relatively short period of time. It wasn’t until the aftermath of the earthquake
that hit the region of Friuli in 1976 and Campania in 1981 that doubts started to creep in
as to the use of concrete as a safe building material. Alternative technologies and
building materials had to be looked into, so as to avoid further errors of judgement. This
is when major wooden buildings started emerging on the Italian landscape as a safe
building alternative, especially in seismic areas, due to the lightness of wood.
To mark a temporal boundary, we can certainly say that prior to 2000, wooden buildings
were presented on the market as innovative solutions, emphasising their structural
performance in terms of rigidity, durability, ductility, fire resistance and in static and
dynamic contexts.
However, the seismic events in Abruzzo 2008 and in Emilia Romagna in 2012 were an
unfortunate reminder to those hit by the earthquakes of the “weakness” of our building
legacy based almost exclusively on concrete. However, wooden buildings received a
boost in the areas hit by the earthquake, especially after 2008, because the reduced
times required for the reconstruction process made them very attractive.
Wood used as a building material, its eco-sustainability.
It is a irrefutable truth that wood is an environmentally-sustainable material, even when
applied to the construction of buildings.
On average, every 1m
3
of wood used in building means savings (3) (referring to the
average of traditional materials) of 1.1 t of CO
2
Austria
is currently the main supplier of the Italian market: 3.9 million hectares (47% of
its territory) is covered by forests, with an average production of 43 million m
3
/year. 2/3
of the annual increase is cut, while 1/3 is left to grow, thus increasing the overall forest
area for future generations.
