Ash and beech in timber engineering

Over thirty percent of Swiss forests contain hardwood, and the trend is increasing.

However, almost only softwood is used in construction: The timber industry still has very few inexpensive components made from hardwood. Individual timber construction companies are developing innovative technologies to close the gap. Because of its high strength, hardwood has the potential to replace steel and concrete.

In comparison, the cross-sections can be reduced by 30 to 50 %, which allows for slimmer architecture. Bruno Abplanalp is convinced that "hardwood is the ecological high-performance material for timber engineering". In contrast to building with softwood, however, there is a lack of standards, characteristic values and established procedures.

Hardwood will open up completely new possibilities and markets for timber engineering, as the naturally renewable raw material has immense structural potential. Today's architecture demands filigree load-bearing structures - timber construction often misses out on opportunities here due to lush cross-sections, starting from the connections.

Read Bruno Abplanalp's entire contribution to the Vienna Glulam Symposium 2014 here: