Towards Circular Timber Construction: Benchmarking Material Use in Nordic Timber Buildings
Abstract
Timber construction is increasingly promoted as a strategy for reducing the environmental impacts of the built environment; however, timber is commonly treated as a homogeneous resource despite substantial differences in the performance requirements of building components. This study investigates component-level timber use and the distribution of high- and low-performance timber demand across different Nordic building typologies. Thirty timber buildings were analyzed, comprising ten A&D (A&D) houses, ten apartment buildings, and ten service buildings. Timber quantities were classified into ten building components, normalized by building floor area, and subsequently grouped into high- and low-performance categories according to their structural and functional requirements. A&D houses exhibited the highest average timber use intensity, followed by service buildings and apartment buildings. However, apartment buildings showed the greatest concentration of timber demand in high-performance components, accounting for approximately 77% of their total timber use, compared with approximately 55% in the other two building typologies. Component-level patterns also differed, with external walls and roofs dominating timber demand in A&D houses, floors and external walls in apartment buildings, and a more distributed pattern across external walls, roofs, and floors in service buildings. The findings demonstrate that timber demand cannot be characterized solely by total material quantity and that component function and performance requirements provide important additional dimensions for evaluating timber resource use. A performance-based allocation approach could support more efficient use of timber resources by matching material quality with component requirements and creating opportunities for suitable lower-grade and secondary timber in less demanding applications.
Reference
Ali Amiri; Stefan Schäfer; Seppo Junnila. (2026). Towards Circular Timber Construction: Benchmarking Material Use in Nordic Timber Buildings. MDPI AG. https://doi.org/10.20944/preprints202610.1186.v1
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