This Heavyweight Network Wants To Help You Build Your Next Building Out Of Wood

Humanity has put a person on the moon and built an algorithm that can beat the best chess players in history, so why can't we find a way of constructing buildings out of something other than cement and steel? 

A new network of industry players and an accelerator fund, backed by one of the world’s richest families, has been set up to answer that question and, more specifically, accelerate the use of timber as a building material in the real estate world.

Built by Nature will bring together companies in the built environment, climate leaders and innovators from multiple fields to assist the real estate and construction sector in cutting carbon emissions by using timber to build rather than cement and steel, the production processes for which emit huge amounts of carbon. 

Built by Nature was set up by the Laudes Foundation, a body aiming to promote a climate-positive global economy. It is backed by the Brenninkmeijer family enterprise, the billionaire Dutch-German family that made its fortune in the European retail sector. 

Major real estate companies that have joined the network include Lendlease, Ikea and Skanska-owned BoKlok and Redevco, the latter of which is the Brenninkmeijer family’s real estate firm. Consultancy firm Arup is also part of the network, as is architecture firm Bennetts Associates and academic institution Cambridge University. 

“Since the industrial revolution, the industry has been optimised around building with cement,” Laudes Foundation Head of Built Environment James Drinkwater said. 

The need to change how buildings are built can be put into context.

“If all new construction, over the next 40 years, is built with business-as-usual standards, the embodied carbon generated from it will equal more than six years' worth of global fuel combustion emissions,” Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance interim Director Trude Rauken said.

Sustainably sourced and managed timber, in contrast, extracts carbon from the atmosphere because trees breathe in carbon dioxide, and "lock it in" to timber-farmed buildings. 

Built by Nature has a grant-giving capacity: It offers grants of between €50,000 to €250,000 to consortia of pioneering expert organisations for projects addressing the barriers to building with timber.

But its ethos is highlighted by the kind of projects to which it is looking to give grants. The fact that this is a network is important — it is trying to address the systemic factors that hold back the adoption of timber buildings, rather than coming up with a silver bullet invention. 

Funded projects could include designing new business models and collecting business case data; innovations and frameworks to increase the climate impact of timber buildings; regulatory innovations; or feasibility tests for large city-scale projects that start to shift the norm for the sector.

One example of systemic challenges faced by developers who might want to build with timber is that such buildings are often more difficult or expensive to insure. Drinkwater said the network is looking to provide data to counter the perception that modern timber buildings are more dangerous and is working to put together an insurance vehicle that will provide policies to developers who are looking to use the material.