The Technical School of Building Engineering of the University of Granada and the LIFE Wood for the Future project have hosted during the 25th and 26th of March 40 students of Maderaula, a classroom of theoretical and practical training in wood construction and near-zero energy consumption. The Maderaula project of the CESEFOR Foundation of Castilla y León and funded by the Green Employment program of the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge, travels to different locations in Spain and aims to train employees in the light-frame construction system to achieve an energy efficient and industrialized construction. A classroom full of Architects, Technical Architects and Building Engineers, vocational training teachers and carpenters, makes clear the enormous expectation and need that exists in the construction sector to expand their training and connection networks every day, in order to give a technologically successful response to the growing demand in the market for solutions with a smaller ecological footprint and lower energy consumption, with less dependence on foreign markets and the growing and volatile price of energy and materials.

The Spanish timber market is growing strongly, following the path of other more mature European markets, with light-frame solutions and construction with laminated and cross-laminated technical timber currently being the most in demand.

The opening of Maderaula at the University of Granada was chaired by Mr. Juan Manuel Santiago, Director of the ETSIE, accompanied by Antolino Gallego, coordinator of the LIFE Wood for the Future project and Edgar Lafuente, Head of Industry and Construction with Wood at CESEFOR. All of them highlighted the enormous role that wood will play in the construction of the 21st century, as a material to generate a real change towards a much lower energy consumption, low carbon and more recyclable construction. Antolino Gallego highlighted the important potential of Andalusia’s forest resources, poplar and coniferous pine forests, currently underutilized for packaging or biomass. These resources can be transformed into structural technical wood products for almost zero energy consumption construction, thus giving them a high added value in the market. Betting on a sustainable use of Andalusian forest resources, endorsed by a sustainable forest certification throughout the chain of custody from the tree to the final product, is synonymous with betting on conservation of our forest resources and also generate wealth for their owners, private and public, generate employment in a local industry and provide enormous environmental values for the whole society and the planet. All attendees stressed that the best way to protect forests from fires and pests is to promote their use in quality products, such as light-frame houses of high energy efficiency proposed by Maderaula and mixed poplar-pine-concrete structural products that will be put on the market with the LIFE Wood for Future project. For this, training at all levels (VET and University), as well as research and innovation, with public-private participation, are essential elements to make this change in construction a reality, and give prominence to wood as the key material for a true Green Revolution in construction and be the engine for a more industrialized Andalusia and less dependent on basic sectors. The course also addressed the challenge of designing products and directing projects towards solutions that require less raw material and intelligently and efficiently mix different materials, depending on their mechanical potential, thus covering a larger market share and achieving higher rates of ecological footprint reduction and energy savings.

During the course, different successful projects in Andalusia were presented, among them those developed by Eduardo Román, architect of the Cadiz-based Polanco industry located in Jerez de la Frontera, the only Andalusian company that manufactures industrialized solutions with lightweight framing, and Ana Carvajal, of the Granada-based Arquigreen studio, Andalusian branch of the emblematic Catalan firm Arquima, a benchmark in the construction of lightweight timber framing in Spain.

The classroom concluded with the on-site development of a prototype of a slab and façade wall with wood fiber and cellulose insulation, for a lightweight, durable construction with almost zero energy consumption.