Using Wood Well

Interactive tools to see how timber is used in buildings and what those buildings are made from.

Project Overview

Using Wood Well (UWW) is a research project about how timber is used in buildings. We want buildings to use materials well and to keep them in use for longer. This is called a circular economy. We study building data at different scales, from the total timber in a whole building to the make-up of its frame.

Level 1 looks at Wood Usage Intensity (WUI) in 695 timber building projects from 25 countries. WUI is the amount of wood in a building for each square metre of floor. We compare sectors, types of structure, building sizes and numbers of storeys (floors). Level 2 looks closely at the frame of 56 projects. It measures Use Renewal Rate (URR), which compares how long wood stays in use with how long it took to grow. It also measures how much of the frame is bio-based, which means made from plants or other living things. Other tools cover how much wood trees grow, market data, and how long materials last.

The project summary document can be read online here: Building within nature's limits.

Level 1 — General Building Analysis

L1 Data Explorer

Interactive scatter plot and box plot for exploring WUI in 695 timber building projects. Filter by sector, number of storeys and floor area. Colour the results by storey band, sector, material type and more.

Level 1

Level 2 — Looking at the Frame

L2 URR Explorer

Scatter plot and box plot for the frames of 56 projects. Explore URR, WUI and BIO, which is the share of the volume that is bio-based. See each one for the whole frame and for each floor.

Level 2

Level 3 - A Whole Building Example

L3 Worked Example — Black & White

A full profile of The Black & White Building. It covers what the building is, its WUI and URR results, what it is made from, and its carbon results from its life cycle assessment (LCA) report.

Level 3

Materials

Material Data Charts

Charts on how much wood trees grow, how old trees are when they are cut, and how the market is shared between types of building material.

Materials

Material Lifespan

A tool for exploring how long building materials last. It includes density figures (how heavy a material is for its size) and the expected service life of each material.

Materials