Torres, João
Abstract:
Wood, as a material, has always had a great deal for Man. Anywhere in the world, wherever there was organic material available, a new kind of housing was invented.
For centuries, wood has retained its status as one of the main materials in building construction until the beginning of the twentieth century in which concrete emerges supported in the recognition of their properties, new created calculation bases and the industrial development. The wooden construction related to housing has nevertheless remained to be a much adopted solution in the United States of America, Northern Europe and Japan.
Nowadays, this industry is growing, emerging refreshed and supported by the growing environmental concerns and notions of sustainability, in the new emerging construction techniques and the creation of new wood-based materials which broadened the scope of this industry.
This dissertation aims to present and analyze new methods of wooden construction, while trying to demystify the claims that led to its decline. Therefore, it will be presented in a general way the most common wood housing types focusing in the prefabricated constructed houses using wood or wood-based materials and modulation. There will be presented representative examples of the prefabricated houses used in domestic and international markets through a characterization of the most common solutions and its scope. In an advanced stage of the work it’s shown the design of a two floor house presenting the key features and bases when adopted a prefabricated wooden building or another in reinforced concretend brick masonry (Masonry Houses). To analyse the feasibility of the new systems it was carried out a technical and economical evaluation by comparing the performances of a prefabricated wooden building and a masonry house. The technical evaluation was performed according to requirements of stability, liveability and durability. At the same time, it was performed a market survey to obtain prices of the building systems in study and then performed an economical evaluation of the competitiveness of new solutions. All findings through the dissertation are presented in the last chapter called Conclusion. In annex are provided tables containing the main characteristics of the materials used in the prefabricated systems under consideration.