Stories and fables are a clear reflection of the time and place in which they were conceived. The story of the three little pigs, for example, could not have come from a country with a tradition of timber construction. The house that the big bad wolf cannot blow down is the brick house, which refers to its British (and not Central European) origin and to a time, that of the Industrial Revolution, in which brick production skyrocketed. However, in the 21st century, the industry is looking to wood as a material of the future for construction. As a result, woodworking professions are no longer limited to crafts or making furniture.
Although in many countries wood has always been the preferred building material (Germany, Austria, Nordic countries or the United States), in others this shift towards what forests produce is still recent and is related to sustainability efforts. If in the 20th century environmental protection was very focused on deforestation, with a certain demonisation of wood, in the 21st century, the focus is on reducing emissions. And wood-derived materials, such as CLT, are presented as a perfect alternative to cement.“Wood is more fragile, yes, and the wind can blow it away. “But it will have to be a wind of 400 km/h”, explains José Luis Delgado, from Sílex Casas de Madera. In other words, those big storms and gales that blow off the roofs of some buildings don’t knock down wooden houses. In the years they have been in the business, which they dedicated themselves to, inspired by houses and cabins such as that of the philosopher Martin Heidegger or the studio of Virginia Woolf in her garden, they have seen how the landscape has changed a lot and how demand has increased.
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“One basic reason is energy; those houses consume practically nothing”, he explains. And then there’s the execution: being able to close up a house in a week so that it doesn’t rain inside, for example. They noticed an initial increase in demand after the housing crisis and, later, after the lockdown.
The need for a new generation of professionals
Who makes wooden houses? The image of a carpenter in his workshop does not reflect the current reality of the industry. To begin with, because “everything related to the world of wood is absolutely technologically advanced ”, says José Antonio Pose, a professor of Wood at the Santiago Polytechnic Integrated Vocational Training Centre (CIFP), where, among others, the Wood Processing and Transformation cycle is taught.
There are hardly any factories or carpentry workshops left that work with raw wood. “90% of wood-related trades work with technical woods”, he explains, citing plywood or structural woods like CLT as examples. The change goes beyond the purely material, because it also affects its handling. “We work with numerical controls. Students from a vocational training program graduate with a level of AutoCAD comparable to those in Architecture. It’s a world apart”, he says.
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The Processing cycle is a medium-level primary transformation cycle, but there are other aspects of the wood construction process that require qualified professionals. José Luis Delgado, from Sílex, explains that in their case, they usually end up training their own staff, although he believes there is also an implicit cultural aspect. “Just as in Spain a few years ago it was very easy to find any neighbour who knew how to work with concrete and brick, there are countries like Finland where on the second door you knock on, you will find someone who will build you a wooden house”, he says.
If we focus on professionalisation, he does notice that in recent years in Spain, there are increasingly more people with specialised training, but he still misses improvements at the project level. “Architecture professionals, they still don’t know about wood; they continue to worry about whether it gets wet, as if it were paper or as if there were no modified or temperature-regulated woods”, he explains.
Both experts agree that some kind of specific training on wooden structures is very necessary, an aspect for which there is a great demand both from companies and from potential students. “We need everyone from someone who can assemble lightweight lattice, which is a trade in itself, or CLT, to someone who can do a number or check. And also trained architects. The last time someone from Architecture came to the CIFP, around 2024, they told me that everything made of wood in the faculty was a four-month elective subject”, Pose recounts.
Good training for good buildings
Countries that have always built with wood have already made a head start. While, like everyone else, they have to adapt to new technologies, invest in industrialisation, and train staff for a trade very different from the traditional work with this material, convincing the public that the story of the three little pigs was just a tale is not among their challenges. In areas with a tradition of building with other materials, such as those in southern Europe, there is indeed that extra obstacle.
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This lack of awareness among the population makes the need for trained professionals much more urgent. “They are building poorly constructed CLT buildings”, notes José Antonio Pose. “And the result is that people who liked the idea and wanted to make a change say, ‘How am I going to do this if it gets damaged, if water gets in?’ But it’s because they’re poorly built or poorly designed, it’s not a problem with the material itself”. However, seeing wooden houses with problems like dampness perpetuates the idea that it’s not a good building material.
“Wood is a durable, perfect element. There are wooden buildings in Europe that are several hundred years old”, he concludes. But the revolution in wood construction needs all those new professionals adapted to an increasingly pressing need.
