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Comment by Findeton | Hacker News Reader

In Europe almost no building is made of wood, except for decorative floors.

You must have never lived outside of a city if that is your perception of buildings. Most of the buildings I have seen in the European countryside are made with a significant amount of wood. Even brick and stone buildings will often have a timber structure. Most buildings are not in cities, in general.

Scandanaivans use a particularly large amount of wood, even in their city centers and even for skyscrapers.

I guess it depends on the region. In Italy, the vast majority of buildings, both in the city and in the countryside, are in stone, bricks and concrete. In some mountainous region in the second half of the 19th century there was a mandated reconstruction of old buildings in bricks and stone to prevent fires.

In northern Europe the building style is entirely different and most houses still have a wooden frame.

I believe AAC is really popular in Europe too (which I suppose could just be considered another form of concrete, but it provides decent insulation, making it more suitable to colder climates).

> Most buildings are not in cities, in general.

Citation? It doesn't stand to reason given that most people live and work in cities, not in rural areas, especially in Europe [1].

https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SP.RUR.TOTL.ZS?location...

Most people live and work in cities, but most city buildings house far more than one person.

I'm including suburbs and towns in my definition of "cities", meaning urban settlements. I'd like to see some quantitative data either way.

I'd wager that even under that definition most city houses in Europe house more than one family. At least in continental Europe, I am not so sure about Britain. But most of Europe doesn't have extensive single family home suburbs in the way the US has.

Indeed: https://frich.no/wood-hotel-by-frich-s

Good grief, which part of Europe are you from ... Concretia?

Even in the UK we describe our normal building habit as "sticks n bricks" and there are a lot of sticks. Under my feet, right now, there are wooden joists and a plywood subfloor. I live on a hill. Some ground floor (first floor) rooms have solid conc. sub floors but the other half has the usual (1930s) two foot cavity, involving brick piers on conc raft and wooden joists to slap the floor across.

We still have a large stock of wattle and daub cottages with thatched roof too.

Every other country in Europe I have ever visited has rather a lot of wooden buildings in it too. I lived in West Germany for some years, for example.

Sticks and bricks lends itself to an environment with plenty of mud and fewer trees. It is quite brittle so no earthquakes thank you. The UK's largest recent earthquake was basically a knee trembler.

That will be the shires then!

I have never heard the phrase 'sticks n bricks'. That is technical parlance. Nobody in the history of Eastenders has used that phrase.

It is true that there are wattle and daub houses but it is the one thatched roof cottage that you notice next to the busy A road, not the thousands of semis in the neighbouring estates.

In Glasgow there are large parts of the city where only some doors are made of wood. Everything else is concrete, steel, plastic and glass. These are 'closes' (apartments) which is different to the English 'close' (street). I am not sure wood would work for 'closes'.

London has a lot of wood, but so much of London might as well be from Orwell's 'Down and Out in Paris and London'. Landlords do not spend money so those sash windows and wooden floors are there for an eternity. West Germany has far better housing stock with details such as windows that close.

Modern German buildings are mostly concrete blocks/CMUs with concrete subfloors and wood mostly used to carry the roof. But of course that's a somewhat recent development, sometime in the first half of the 20th century. Before that there was a lot of brick with wooden floors, and before that either stone with wooden subfloor or wooden frames filled with clay.

Of course this is somewhat region dependent, and wood is definitely making a comeback again

That's actually part of the history of the new world. One of the primary uses of wood in Europe throughout the colonial period was boat-building. As such, one of the primary exports of early settlers and colonial corporations in the British colonies was timber, for boats. Eventually, it led to an indigenous boat-building industry, and from that, American mercantilism.

Depends on when each country ran out of wood.

Depends where in Europe. I'd say in Northern Europe, especially in Scandinavia wood is more frequently used when building homes.

In other places the roof structure is often made of wood. And although technically it's not part of the building, concrete forms used for foundation/walls are mostly made of OSB/plywood.

There are many countries in Europe where most buildings are made of wood.

most buildings? any example of such a country?

Norway. At least most buildings where people live. That’s not exactly the same statement that most people live in wood buildings, since more people can live in a single concrete block. But I would venture that at least half the population lives in wooden buildings.

If you want a detached house (or a townhouse) in Norway it means wood.

Norway, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia etc. etc.

Not all but many of small houses are wood and 50% of the Swedish population lives in these houses[1], some of the bigger houses are wood as well. Construction relies heavily on wood. This was not my experience in many other countries, even when there was wood in the vicinity. I think the readily availability of spruce and pine is one reason. It would be interesting to know statistics from Denmark because in the south of Sweden wood is that used as much.

You can see this in the tradition of constructing fences as well, if there is a lot of wood people use lots of it. In the south near Denmark the tradition is to use as little as possible.

[1] https://www.scb.se/hitta-statistik/sverige-i-siffror/mannisk...

Few buildings in Europe are today solely made from wood, but nearly every building will be part wood. From the frame on which walls and floors are built up with other materials up to the roof where for most houses the very structure is made from wood, it's clear wood is one of the most essential building components. To be honest I struggle to think of any building I've ever seen that has no wood - except for semi-subterranean structures or those built out of natural structures I can't think of any.

In Spain I can tell you that wood is very rarely used except in a decorative fashion. My mom is an architect and will often look down on the fact that most North American single family homes, and even more complex buildings like five-over-ones, use wood structurally.

Why look down on structural uses of wood?

In England we definitely use wood in pretty much all houses. The roof trusses, the partition walls, the floorboards, beams to hold the ceiling/upstairs, fixtures (kitchen and bathroom fitted cabinets), doors etc.

I would guess the person you’re responding to doesn’t mean the hidden bits, as I’ve spent time in Spain and definitely come across wood in new buildings.

A potential reason for less obvious wood, Spain has less requirement for insulation than the UK and would benefit from slimmer walled, brick/concrete houses with no wooden partitions holding insulation for cooler temperatures during their peak heat.

That sounds like a recent development. Without reinforced concrete and steel there is no way to span walls without timber beams.

> That sounds like a recent development.

Reinforced concrete is almost two hundred years old by now [0]. How many people live in homes built over one hundred years ago? Not only have many of those old homes been replaced, but the population is much larger now.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforced_concrete#History

> How many people live in homes built over one hundred years ago?

Many people in Europe's historical city centres.

the arch is almost 2500 years old now, and although you do normally use timber beams (or bamboo) to build one, they aren't part of the final structure

vaults, domes, and flying buttresses extend the arch principle to enclose large spaces. there are domes still standing made from unreinforced concrete that are 2000 years old

Indeed, my parents' UK 1785-ish built house is mostly stone, but it has 3 big salvaged wooden beams (salvaged from shipwrecked masts) running through the frame.

Almost every house in Europe (and elsewhere) has a wooden roof frame.

I have lived in multiple houses and flats in different parts of England, and all but one had wooden floors. I am pretty sure all but that had used in roofs and possibly some other places. The same is true for most houses I have been in.

The structure of near every roof, apart from the skyscrapers, ist made of wood.

By Europe you mean Legoland?

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