The laboratory of the Structural Wood Research Unit (UIMA) of the UGR, the coffered ceilings of the Alhambra and the Royal Hospital, and the footbridge over the Monachil River are some of its focuses of interest.

The training programme responds to the need for specialisation in innovative materials on the part of architecture and engineering professionals, in view of the boom in sustainable construction with wood.

Granada, 25 January. Students and professors of the sixth edition of the Master’s Degree in Construction with Wood of the Polytechnic University of Madrid (UPM) are visiting Granada this week to visit various places of interest for their 60 ECTS credits course programme, which includes theoretical classes, laboratory practice and visits to construction sites, factories and companies.

The Master’s Degree in Construction with Wood is a degree of the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid that arises from the collaboration between the Construction with Wood Research Group and the Gómez-Pintado Foundation. It is taught at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingeniería de Montes, Forestal y del Medio Natural and at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Madrid, with its own teaching staff as well as teaching staff from other universities, companies and research centres in Spain and abroad.

The master’s degree is fundamentally technical and professional in nature and most of its students are practicing architects and engineers who require specialised training in wood as a key material in the most innovative trends in sustainable construction.

Thanks to the collaboration of the UPM’s Wood Construction Research Group with the LIFE Wood for Future project led by the University of Granada (UGR), this year they are visiting different places in Andalusia. “In previous editions, the technical trip has been made to Galicia, the Basque Country and Catalonia. This year we chose Andalusia because there are many interesting wooden structures and the University of Granada is very involved in the development of new wood products”, explained the researcher Daniel F. Llana, organiser of this trip of the Master in Construction with Wood.

 

The training of specifiers and technicians is one of the essential aspects and a current bottleneck to respond to the growing demand for timber construction in Spain and Andalusia. That is why universities play an essential role and we must be agile in incorporating this knowledge into our undergraduate and postgraduate curricula, especially in Architecture and Building Engineering,” said UGR professor Antolino Gallego, coordinator of the Structural Wood Research Unit of Andalusia (UIMA) and LIFE Wood for Future.

Thus, yesterday, Wednesday 24 January, they visited the Alhambra and saw in detail the recent restoration of the roofs and coffered ceilings of the Sala de Comares.

Today, Thursday 25th, as examples of the use of wood in restoration, the group will see the projects carried out in the Royal Hospital, precisely with laminated pine and carbon fibre beams manufactured by UIMA, and the Hospital de San Juan de Dios.

In the afternoon, they will visit the UIMA laboratory at the UGR School of Building Engineering.

On Friday 26th, they will visit the Institute for Agricultural and Fisheries Training and Research of Andalusia (Ifapa) and its research projects with poplar clones for the production of construction elements, as well as some plantations in the Vega de Granada.

They will then visit the old sugar factory of Santa Fe La Cantina, where IberoLam Timber&Technology, the first factory of poplar and laricio pine products for building in southern Spain, is to be set up.

Finally, students and teachers will be able to study the wooden footbridge over the Monachil River completed last month by the Andalusian Regional Government’s Department of Public Works as part of the cycle path between the Health Technology Park and the Serrallo tunnels. The 27-metre-long footbridge was transported in its entirety from Asturias, where it was manufactured by the company Media Madera, Spain’s leading manufacturer of this type of structure.

The group will then travel to Malaga to visit other buildings and structures of interest.