an activity with plenty of room for growth in Euskadi

This Wednesday and Thursday the International Forum on Architecture and Architecture will be held at the Bilbao Exhibition Center in Barakaldo Egurtek. Wooden constructionin which 63 companies from different countries will give their presentation innovative products, services and solutions for sustainable construction or bioconstruction. Some Basque companies in this sector will be present, such as Egoin, Termogenik, Grupo Gamiz, Protec and Zuhaizki.

You can also hear the experiences of local personalities and top international experts in wooden architecture, such as architect David Chipperfield, winner of the 2023 Pritzker Prize (the ‘Oscars’ of architecture). This forum is part of the Wood Week organized by Baskegur, the Wood Association of Euskadi, in which other informative sessions will be held in addition to the Egurtek forum.

The timber sector It covers all economic activities related to wood, from forestry to construction, including paper production. It is an important sector in the Basque Autonomous Community, which, according to the Euskadi Wood Observatory 2022, generated a GDPcf (GDP at factor cost) of 745 million euros in 2019.

When we look at our environment, every time we can see more new buildings whose structure or facade is made of wood. Although there has been a boom in the use of this material in construction, buildings are built with it They achieve less than 2% of everything that is builtso the sector has a lot room to grow.

Most of the constructions carried out with this material so far have been public works or company headquarters, etc. Some examples are the Muxikeberri cultural center in Getxo (work by LMU Arkitektura and Grupo Gamiz) and the expansion of the Usurbil music school (work from OS3 Arkitektura and Egoin).

But little by little they start to see it even apartment buildings grew up with this sustainable material. In 2017, Visesa, the publicly traded company of the Basque government, built the largest residential building built in wood in south-west Europe to date in Hondarribia. Soon we will also see a building of this style in Bilbao, in Zorrozaurre, where the Basque government has approved the construction of 57 residential houses. It will be a building without energy consumption and built with the CLT system (cross-laminated timber).

From Baskegur they want to emphasize that in the Basque Autonomous Community we have the entire timber value chain; We have the forests and also companies involved in extraction, treatment and construction. The latter also work largely with raw materials from the area; that is to say approximately 70% of the wood they use for their products it is kilometer 0, comes from the forests of Euskal Herria and the surrounding areas.

But in Catalonia, Galicia and especially in the north in Europe, the weight of this raw material comes from the forests much higher in construction than in our areaso a large part of what our companies produce is usually exported. In the Scandinavian countries, almost all buildings are made of wood. In Germany, an estimated half are built with this material, as in France, where the government introduced a law in 2020 requiring public buildings to be built with at least 50% wood or natural materials.

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The type of wood used for construction varies depending on the part of the world. In our area, radiata pine or pinus insignis is mainly used (the most common in our forests), although there are also companies that work with nobler types of wood such as beech. Other types of pine predominate on the peninsula and in Northern Europe the Douglas fir is more common.

The architect Maialen Sagarna (OS3 Arkitektura) designed and directed the renovation works of the Zumarte Music School in Usurbil. Wood is the main material for the facade and the building is strongly integrated into the landscape.