Conference Report | Wood will play a tremendous role in the New European Bauhaus: Wood4Bauhaus featured at the Vatican and the NEB Festival 

“Sustainably harvested timber can reduce a building’s carbon emissions by up to 60%. Pope Francis is so right when he says that ‘humans are not meant to be inundated by cement and steel’. Building more with natural elements, like wood, is both good for the planet, and good for the wellbeing of people.”

Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission.

“Can humanity build itself out of the climate crisis with a tree? Can our salvation from the climate crisis come out from a tree? (…) Our current building technology leaves a heavy carbon footprint, either for the production of cement, iron, steel, or aluminium. (…) A few months ago, I witnessed a lot of display from the German public, about how wood provides alternatives to the building culture that we have now, and how that can provide a solution. It is a search for building human habitats that leave hardly any carbon footprint. The project Bauhaus der Erde invites us along that path of discovery and search. (…) We are looking at a better future, which will be signalled by the revolutionary and innovative use of wood.”

Cardinal Peter K.A. Turkson, Chancellor of the PAS.

“This is the motto: we have to reforest the planet and retimber the city. We have enough degraded land on this planet, about 1 billion hectares, which we could turn into vital ecosystems again, into managed forests and so on (…). To restore the climate, we need to, first, add and support 500 billion trees (that is 50 trees per every human being), and second, build 2 billion homes from harvested biomass. This is the nature-based solution. (…) Nature did a fantastic job of extracting CO₂ from the atmosphere: we need to replay this process, by turning cities into organic mass. To make the built environment sustainable, beautiful, inclusive, we need to bring together high-tech and no-tech.”

Prof John Schellnhuber, Founder of Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research and Bauhaus Earth

“What is our epoch today, what are the challenges we are facing? The climate crisis is real. Building materials are limited, population growth is eminent, especially in the so-called Global South, and conflict will intensify, because of the few resources we have. This should concern every one of us. (…) It is not because you are rich, that you should waste energy, but you have to look for alternatives. It is about combining and engineering materials which are locally available to create structures. There is hope in the world if you use the material in a very smart way. (…) Africa loves Europe: if you do things right, we going to copy it, and if you do things wrong, we going to copy it. Imagine if the growing population of Africa would behave the way the privileged have in the past, what will be the future of our planet?”

Diébédo Francis Kéré, Founder of Kéré Architects, Pritzker Prize 2022

“Why wood? Because we are not only fulfilling the sustainability requirements, but we are also connecting people to nature. (…) Because true circularity can be achieved: with renewable materials, we can go in circles, and with proper management of the forest, we are not taking anything from nature. Today we often see that wood is just used for energy. I would say, let us encourage one another that we are not burning the wood but that we are enhancing its use in a cascade [to create more value and a much longer life cycle].”

Prof Andreja Kutnar, InnoRenew CoE and Wood4Bauhaus Alliance

“The Bauhaus Earth construct is that possibly forests working in synergy rather than in antagonism with cities could be a way to solve the planet’s problems. (…) We should assess and perhaps monetize the value of that material stored in the built environment because it is significant, so that we can incentivize the afforestation and forest restoration. We can carry this idea of carbon measurement through the stem’s succession, how the forest will re-grow, and we can re-build an entire urban morphology. Thus we can create durable carbon storage banks, thinking not about only one, but multiple lifecycles of buildings. (…) This is not our grandparent’s wood anymore; this is a new system. It requires a deep understanding of science, of design, and interdisciplinarity. We can make buildings that are uplifting, beautiful, inclusive, and also protect the planet.”

Alan Organschi, Gray Organschi Architecture and Bauhaus Earth

“Most importantly, by using the tools that we have as architects and planners, and applying them at the scale of our planet, we can obtain a clarity and an overview that allows us to see the bigger picture. The absence of such a plan has catastrophic consequences, so we should actually dare together to give form to a plan for our planet. (…) If we could make the environmental performance of a building such a hard metric, which is not just part of their public relations, but of the hard-working performance of buildings, it would be much easier for others to follow. This is really where the New European Bauhaus can give everybody a tool, because the industry is longing to be able to commit more to environmental performance, but they want to compete on equal terms – and the only way to do that is to come up with very comparable, accountable measures.”

Bjarke Ingels, Founder of BIG Bjarke Ingels Group

“I am architect, but after practicing many years, I was very disappointed with my profession as architect, because we are mainly working for privileged people who have power and money. Because power and money are not visible, they hire us to make a monument to show off their power to the general public. But I also wanted to work for the society, that is why I started to work in disaster areas. I recognized, earthquake never kills people, but the collapse of buildings kills people. And when a city rebuilds, we get more projects as architects. But I found out that people are suffering with very poor living conditions in shelters and temporary houses. So I believe it is our responsibility as architects to improve the conditions of people after such disasters. (…) I started using recyclable paper tubes, because I hate throwing things away. So I found out these paper tubes are much stronger than I expected, and they have enough strength to make buildings.”

Shigeru Ban, Founder of Shigeru Ban Architects, Pritzker Prize 2014

“For me it was a big pleasure to be sitting at the conference in Vatican, listening to several speeches and in all of them the word wood was used. Five years ago, we could only dream about this, and now the whole word is talking about it. The New European Bauhaus is focusing strongly on the built environment, and on connecting all stakeholders from around the word and together discuss the needed changes for lowering the harmful emissions.”

Prof Andreja Kutnar, Director of InnoRenew CoE

“We created the Wood4Bauhaus Alliance as a joint channel for dissemination to demonstrate the real solutions and innovations already existing in our sector and to communicate with everyone interested about the positive impacts that wood and engineered wood products do have on the environment.”

Uwe Kies, Secretary General of InnovaWood

When New European Bauhaus was presented, we saw the opportunity for the wood sector, and with the right circular approach, we can improve the built environment and turn it into a carbon sink. To complete the circularity in the bioeconomy, EPF is actively supporting the development of technologies to enable the recycling of fibreboard waste in the EU Horizon Europe project EcoReFibre.”

Kris Wijnendaele, Member of the Managing Board, European Panel Federation