We are interested in exploring if material supply that swaps centralisation for distributed supply-chains is a passing fad or a real renaissance in localism. Is what some see as an idealist response showing signs of reaching scale? These approaches are not consigned to just timber, but to other construction materials too. Is this a return towards vernacular building that recognises material availability?

In the heart of northwest Spain, the city of Lugo is embracing bioregional approaches. We visited the architects, politicians, manufacturers, and foresters who are enabling this recent shift to find out more.

Exploring opportunities in localised timber supply chains.

BIOREGIONALISM

The city

Located within the region of Galicia, rich in forests, the area’s recent history has been witnessing a marked decline in timber use for construction. Forestry has become monocultural and timber use increasingly focussed on pallet and biomass production.

of Lugo.

Driven by local government, forest owners, and timber manufacturers, the region is witnessing a renewed push for regional timber use in Lugo's civic and private buildings. Impulso Verde, stands as a testament to this movement, the first mid-rise structure built entirely from timber sourced within a 100km radius.

The Impulso Verde building construction showcases the potential of local resources and inspires sustainable practices through its use of a pine cross-laminated timber core, glulam facade, and eucalyptus glulam grid shell roof.

The recent build project in Lugo and the city’s transition toward wider use of local timber in construction has not been without challenges. Susanna Penedo Souto, the municipal architect in Lugo highlights the social complexities of moving away from traditional timber economies.

“...there are many people making a living from the sector, from the bioeconomy, from the eucalyptus sector. It is a very important sector in the province of Lugo, if we take away their livelihood, their way of life, this becomes, let's say, a social rejection.”

(Susanna Penedo Souto, municipal architect)

Further along the value chain, Xilinor the local CLT manufacturer has had to develop a new plant to enable them to process the predominant regional species. New digital supply chain controls have also been developed to manage timber from the many thousands of small forest owners in the area.

Xilonor, CLT Manufactorer (Galicia)

In Wiltshire,

England

a similar bioregional approach can be seen at Vastern Timber. The focus here is on sourcing predominantly British-grown timber within a 150-kilometre radius of the mill. The commitment of this family-run saw mill to local woodlands is evident as we walk through the timber stacks and is something that Tom talks passionately about.

Brimstone, the thermally modified timber that Tom refers to, is a direct response to a drop in demand for the hardwoods the local woodlands are producing and a need for a modern durable timber product for the construction industry. Whilst in Lugo the bioregional response has been driven by a public need to reinvent the timber industry, for Vastern it is a bioregional response to the timber that the immediate landscape could provide.

“Brimstone came off the back of lots and lots of conversations about British woodlands, particularly the broadleaf woodlands, and why they were failing economically. And that broadly was because the demand for many of the species we grow had dropped right off with the furniture market.”

Hear more about Vastern Timber from Tom in this short feature on the Species page

Shifting from selling low-value standing timber to also providing high-value glulam was a risky investment. It took ten years for them to start to build a market for bioregional glulam products. A cultural wariness of using English timber in structural applications had to be overcome and this slow evolution began with offering spruce and larch glulam.

Buckland can now offer both hardwood and softwood beams sourced regionally and have an expanding market as the construction industry and markets start to see regionalism as an inherent part of sustainability.

Another UK manufacturer with its roots in the woods is Buckland Timber in Devon. At time of writing (2024) Buckland Timber is the largest glulam manufacturer in the UK. Founded by adjacent woodland owners in 2012 who were keen to find a way to make the best use of their timber. In doing so they have invested in a vertically integrated operation.

In Thuringia, Germany, Pollmeier manufactures beech laminated veneer lumber (LVL) from timber sourced within a 200km radius.

We met with Patrik Rodlberger (Managing Director) and Doris Tegelkamp (Head of Sales & Marketing) to learn about Baubuche. Literally translated as ‘construction beech’ the creation of this product has been driven by a desire to maximise what is possible with local beech.

“If we look at beech trunks today, we see that some of them are very, very crooked and have large knots. And if we now saw boards from it, there are many qualities that would not be usable for the load-bearing area.”

Patrik Rodlberger, Managing Director

"As far as beech is concerned, we simply found that it is very, very difficult to obtain enough material of sufficient quality ...And the question was simply whether we wanted to continue working in this area or not."

Doris Tegelkamp,

Head of Sales & Marketing

By moving from traditional sawn beams and boards to engineered timber, Pollmeier has been able to adapt to regional timber properties and turn low-quality, low-value timber into high-value structural products now used globally.

The power of leveraging materials available on the doorstep is not something lost on Partik. In discussions that underline what is necessary for bioregional approaches to work, he notes the importance of the forestry sector and timber industry pulling together to initiate the paradigm shift necessary to move us towards utilisation of local timber within a framework of renewable volume.

Hear more from Patrik and Doris at Pollmeier in our short feature on the Species page

Beech veneer stack

Baubuche finished product

Baubuche large span roof structure

Custom roof connection

Professor Jan Knippers (ITKE, University of Stuttgart) whose work is in digital computational design spoke with us on the importance of regional resource availability in reducing ecological footprints.

An advocate for strengthening local value chains, much like Patrik at Pollmeier, Jan is keen to utilise the regionally abundant material of beech to support medium-sized enterprises and minimise environmental impacts associated with importing building materials from elsewhere.

“I think almost everyone has now realised that we really have to make sure that we use the building materials that we have here locally - regenerative building materials that are available regionally.”

Professor Jan Knippers

LOCAL

VALUE
CHAINS

Through the work at Stuttgart University, bioregionalism is explored in two directions. One from a supply-led perspective where the question is ‘how can locally grown hardwoods, with their inherent structural stiffness, be used to produce efficient CLT panels that maximise the characteristics of the local material’.

And secondly, from a demand-led view. The robotics lab (Institute for Computational Design) at Stuttgart is focussed on manufacturing solutions that can be distributed across smaller local mills. In the near future vehicle mounted robotic fabrication will be temporarily located at the local sawmill to manufacture digitally optimised CLT panels based on the species coming into the mill and for local housing needs.

The question remains: will centralised systems adapt better to these changes, or is the flexibility of bioregionalism the solution?

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