The Situation With Use of Wood Constructions in Contemporary Latvian Architecture / Medinių Konstrukcijų Panaudojimas Šiuolaikinėje Latvijos Architektūroje

Abstract

9(1): 9-15Trees do absorb more CO 2 in the growing phase and the absorption slows down when trees mature. From the perspective of climate change and efficient use of resources, the harvested biomass should be used as material for as long as possible in order to replace more fossil energy intensive materials in structural components (e.g. bearing and enclosing structures), before they are used to generate energy (Werner et al. 2010;Poudel 2014;Upton et al. 2008).There are many forests and a well-developed timber industry in Latvia, and adjoining Baltic States. Several companies produce timber products as well as panels and modules for the construction industry, but about 90% of production is exported to other EU countries (Andersons 2012). Latvian society does not seem to care about climate change, its CO 2, footprint or the Life Cycle index, but is positively disposed towards ecology and sustainability in many sectors -i.e. food, clothing, decoration materials and private house construction. Wood in architecture has been used for centuries, but nowadays wood is used less than other materials among government and municipal procurement projects and private business projects as well.The information on the history of wooden architecture is available in various sources. The oldest wooden house remains were found at the Latvian Lubana Plain archaeological excavations and are attributable to the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras (from the 9th millennium to the second Abstract. Wood is a historic building material used throughout the Baltic States. Latvia's forests cover 52% of the country and there are more than 30 producers of timber constructions materials, but during the last two decades the use wood in Latvian architecture has declined when compared to other countries in Europe. In particular -Latvian architects avoid the use of timber in public and multi-unit apartment buildings. Wood is a sustainable and technically appropriate building material for many types of buildings including complex construction, but in Latvian architecture it is used more in facades as a finishing material. This study analyses buildings built during the last few decades, conducted a number of interviews and found that the percentage of wooden buildings in the total building volume in Latvia is less than 5% in both apartment buildings and public sector buildings.Restrictive legislation and negative stereotypes were mentioned as reasons as to why architects avoid the use of wood. For the survey results seven Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art competition projects were analysed as well.

Green Development in the Construction of Family Houses in Urban and Rural Settlements in Slovakia

“…These cause misconceptions about the real characteristics of such constructions. The authors in [64,65] clearly claimed that ecological materials have always been used as a building material for the construction of houses and meet all requirements to be considered as the healthiest building material. Reference [58] also agreed with these results, and stated that the reason why the ecological buildings are not popular in the SR (unlike, for example, in Germany, Austria, or other countries) is the insufficient professional readiness of the realization undertakings and small impact of good examples of realized constructions from Germany or Scandinavia.…”

Funding Modalities for Timber Housing in Brazil

“…The importance of this present evaluation goes in favor to the current global trend regarding sustainable construction projects as well as those based on materials from renewable sources. Timber application and its better utilization for construction has been a persistent topic in several studies including Kniffen -Glassie (1966), Charles (1984), Gold -Rubik (2009), Roos et al (2010), Kuzman -Grošelj (2012), Zani (2013), Punhagui (2014), Wang et al (2014), Hurmekoski et al (2015), Leite -Lahr (2015), De Araujo et al (2016a, b, 2018c, 2019, Koppelhuber et al (2017), Kuzman -Sandberg (2017), Ramage et al (2017), Viluma (2017), Franzini et al (2018), and Sotsek -Santos (2018), etc.…”

Influence of Reinforcement on Wood Tensile Strength Submitted to Weathering

“…Wood is an important material for many applications, which is used in construction, furniture, sport equipment and musical instruments. It has a good ratio between mechanical strength and density, besides being natural, renewable and abundant in Brazil (Adamopoulos and Passialis, 2010;Beech, 2017;Viluma, 2017;Rodrigues and Christoforo, 2019).…”