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by kelchm
1862 days ago
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I really don’t understand the distaste that many Europeans seem to have for wood. It’s an incredible natural composite material and trees are basically the ultimate renewable resource. Particularly when combined with modern building science, there is absolutely no reason that a modern stick built house cannot last for hundreds of years and be energy efficient. |
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The extreme of this was, say, 1800s Scottish architecture - the typical croft house was designed to use exactly one piece of proper lumber, the roof beam, while the walls were all stone, because trees were scarce.
https://www.electricscotland.com/history/journey/jour3.htm
> From the bank of the Tweed to St. Andrews I had never seen a single tree, which I did not believe to have grown up far within the present century. Now and then about a gentleman's house stands a small plantation, which in Scotch is called a policy, but of these there are few, and those few all very young. The variety of sun and shade is here utterly unknown. There is no tree for either shelter or timber. The oak and the thorn is equally a stranger, and the whole country is extended in uniform nakedness, except that in the road between Kirkaldy and Cowpar, I passed for a few yards between two hedges. A tree might be a show in Scotland as a horse in Venice. At St. Andrews Mr. Boswell found only one, and recommended it to my notice; I told him that it was rough and low, or looked as if I thought so. This, said he, is nothing to another a few miles off. I was still less delighted to hear that another tree was not to be seen nearer. Nay, said a gentleman that stood by, I know but of this and that tree in the county.