Wooden Culture in Italy:Past, Present and Future

In the next few years CO2 emission in the atmosphere must be reduced significantly. In the construction industry it will be necessary to build low carbon buildings. To accomplish this we must use renewable and natural materials that require low energy to produce. Also the energy consumed for heating and cooling the buildings needs to be minimized. This management will be easier if the buildings are well insulated and following the principles of bioclimatic architecture. To build in timber construction could be a good constructive and sustainable solution. A building tradition in wood doesn’t exist in the main part of Italy, limited to the Alpine regions, in north Italy, where wood has been always widely used prehistorically for the stilts to hold up buildings and then for the first houses on land. Until recently wooden buildings have been constructed mostly in the rural area and in mountain settlements. Today only 1.5 % of the new buildings in Italy are timber, although the ratio is growing. The building systems most often used in Italy are “blockbau”, “post and beam”, “framed load bearing panels” and the “xlam system”. The first and the second one evolve from traditional systems used from the Middle Ages in all of Europe. The third one is the evolution of the American “platform frame” in which the panels can also be precast in the factory. The “xlam system” is a new system that was introduced less than 25 years ago from Germany. With this system at moment in Italy houses are being built with two or three stories high quality thermal insulation and, consequentially, with low energy consumption. Recently houses have been built with 5-7 floors. A prototype of this type of building has been tested on vibrating platforms for severe earthquake with good results. Future development will be for buildings with 15-20 floors to solve the problem of social housing. This dispersal of the new culture of the timber buildings throughout Italy can provide a major contribution to sustainable building and limit the CO2 emission to the atmosphere. These new buildings will sequester 1.06 ton of CO2 for each cubic meter of timber used. Also good thermal behavior can contribute to save energy and consequently to reduce the use of the energy from non renewable sources.