It looks like the entire thing is made of chipboard and planks of wood? Is it a temporary building? How long does that last?
A friend of mine purchased a hundred plus year old wood house. The standards back then were non-existent, boards placed wherever, seemingly constructed stupidly in every possible regard, and it managed over a century regardless through routine maintenance. Keeping in mind that's starting from ~1900. Starting from the standards today, you should easily get over a century. Use a metal roof, replace it every 40-60 years depending, and just take care of it.
My house is 1880s vintage, and it's sorta post-and-beam, with 10x10 beams making up the frame, and double layers of 12" to 30" wide pine floorboards. You can't even begin to find lumber like that today, unless you've got a stand of high quality timber that's been saved out and not cut already, and a sawmill to do custom sawing.
Of course, at any time there are many poorly-built houses being made - it's not fair to compare only the old houses that have survived with the cheapest of current homes. And there are probably some "miracle materials" today that will be found to have big problems in practice, from lower-than-expected lifetimes to significant safety risks (c.f. polybutylene pipes, asbestos, lead paint).
Personally I enjoy living in a 125yo home. It's balloon-framed, and the joist spacing is inconsistent, and if you replicated this structure with modern lumber it would probably be dangerous. With 1890s-era lumber, it's just a little off-kilter. :)
Today, building something with massive sturdy timber would likely not be much cheaper (if at all) than just building a concrete box.
There's really no reason to use huge beams for house style construction. Decent wood is incredibly strong.
This house seems to be employing OSB everywhere anything wider than a 2x4 is needed. I assume most of the criticism being voiced is in response to the OSB, not of the wood frame.
Something as common as a burst water pipe (there's snow on the ground in the video) is likely to cause severe structural damage to this home due to the liberal use of OSB, particularly in the joists.
OSB is a relatively modern invention, none of the history you mention is relevant to its application.
OSB is usually used in the sheathing alone, which can easily be replaced when needed (OSB can't get wet). On higher quality builds, plywood is used for the sheathing.
I've never seen a home with OSB joists, but most of the homes I've seen under the skirt of were built between the 1950s-80s.
Over time the average build quality has certainly diminished. OSB usage continues to increase despite its obvious problems. It's another casualty of population growth. Consumer goods are made of plastic, and your homes are increasingly made from glued together woodchips.
Chipboard is made from sawdust and is completely different in load-bearing ability.
Not the joists. The flat panels he's making the floors and walls from - they're chipboard, or OSB https://www.quora.com/What-is-a-chipboard.
There doesn't seem to be anything solid in the house at all - no brick or stone.
Why does there need to be brick or stone? An all wooden building does better in earthquakes than a masonry building, as one example benefit. Another is that it's cheaper.
I guess there must be no need at all, since Americans are happily building and living in these houses.
It's just so odd to people in countries where you are used to all four walls in every internal room being a foot of solid brick to think you would build houses out of what looks like sticks and not-much-more-than-cardboard. It seems so temporary.
What did the three little pigs teach us?
But as I say this seems to work fine for the Americans so it must be great in practice.
Why would all four walls in every internal room need to be a foot of solid brick? That's so wasteful, and a nightmare for retrofitting with additional utility services. I get that you are used to it, but custom isn't a valid reason for things to be done a certain way. We need to go back to first principles. What's the best way to build a house? Well, in North America, wood is widely available, cheap, and builds a strong house that's resistant to earthquakes. Why would you use anything else? Also keep in mind that farmed wood is carbon neutral, while concrete and bricks are not.
And it's not temporary. Wooden houses will easily last centuries. Given how quickly technology is changing anyway, how long do you really need a house to last? Even one century is probably more than enough. Also consider that the average length of home ownership is 13 years; why does it matter what happens seven owners down the line after you're already dead?
Also, the moral of the three little pigs fairy tale is that hard work and dedication pay off, not that literally brick is the best construction material (it's not).
Well there you go - they're designed to be temporary - a fifth of houses in the UK are a century old or more, so from experience in this country we don't see a century as being 'more than enough' for a building to last and we use brick to achieve that.