[byw]

To me these "traiditional" style buildings in Europe would be considered "modern" by North American standards.

Structurally, it feels like North American houses have been built the same way since the colonies started (sidings, frames/studs, gabled/shingled roofs). We even try to keep the houses look as close to the colonial styles as possible, with plastic/aluminum sidings and windows imitating wood.

In Europe it seems like they moved completely over to steel-frame, concrete/composite walls. Roofs mostly metal, windows large and not flimsy. I heard one explanation is the trees being all cut down in Europe during the industrial revolution, but I'm not sure that tells the whole story. Dimensional lumber there are easy to buy and not that much more expensive. Ocean shipping is dirty cheap.

If I were to take a wild guess it has more to do with modern fire-safety standards (can't spread to another room), which the lumber/construction industry in NA have probably lobbied against.

[letrowekwel]

Lumber is widely used in Nordic and other Northern European countries, precisely because they have lots of forests. It's most common in houses, but even apartment locks are being built from wood these days. Fire safety is not much of an issue if you do it right.

Using more wood would make a lot of sense, since it's essentially a long-term carbon sink. Concrete production on the other hand causes massive carbon emissions. After spending some time in a house with lumber from 1800s, I can only admire the quality and craftmanship.

[byw]

>but even apartment locks are being built from wood these days.

Are the apartments traditional wood-framed or cross-laminated timber? CLT is an entirely different beast that performs more like concrete or heavy timber in fire. I would put them more in the category of composite material.

I think CLT are already popular in parts of Europe, but in NA they are quite rare. They are usually only for very premium apartments or government buildings. Most wooden multi-unit buildings in NA are built the same way as houses and are quite flimsy. Though in the past couple years they tried to mitigate it with heavy stuffing of sound insulation to make everything sound more solid. One major difference is you don't hear footsteps as much. Older wooden buildings are a nightmare if you are sensitive to noise.

Pre-war houses (middle/upper-class ones) in NA are also quite solid. The structural quality difference between pre-war and post-war houses are night and day.

[mcpackieh]

Traditional wood frame, with lumber pressure treated with a fire retardant. They might have some CLT beams, but they're predominantly built out of pressure treated lumber and plywood. They're safe because they have sprinkler systems, building-wide fire alarms and redundant fire-resistant staircases.

Sound generally isn't an issue if you have polite neighbors, but if somebody upstairs is doing jumping jacks you'll definitely hear it.

[bobthepanda]

A lot of the old European stuff was also bombed out in the 40s. I would imagine that in the postwar era, getting everyone under roofs quickly would've been the priority, and there wasn't possibly enough wood to do that for all of Europe.

[carlosjobim]

The amount of destruction from bombing Europe is greatly exaggerated I think. Most of towns and cities were hardly touched.

[mejutoco]

I don‘t think it was exaggerated when Europe needed the Marshal plan to reconstruct. You can check the scale in dollars.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan

In many cities bombs are still routinely found and deactivated. In Berlin, for example, a few blocks of Kreuzberg are now and then emptied (go do sth for the day) by the authorities to deactivate ww2 bombs.

It also sounds a bit insensitive.

[SSLy]

Maybe in Sweden. Certainly not between Rhein and Dnieper.

[fmajid]

Beautiful coastal cities like Rotterdam or Le Havre were bombed to smithereens.

[carlosjobim]

Europe is enormous.

[bobthepanda]

There’s also the second part of that statement; the need to house people quickly.

Even untouched places like Sweden had to deal with housing masses coming to cities due to postwar urbanization. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Million_Programme

[JohnFen]

> Structurally, it feels like North American houses have been built the same way since the colonies started (sidings, frames/studs, gabled/shingled roofs).

In the US, this depends a lot on where you are (at least for older buildings). Buildings tended to be built from whatever materials were in the area, so you get lots of brick in the midwest, lots of woodframe in the west, etc. What primary material was used has a pretty large effect on the style of the building.

[byw]

I'm not sure about other parts of the East Coast, but when I was in Toronto, while the older houses are bricks, many newer ones are wood-framed with a brick facade. What surprised me was that many owners had no idea, especially if they bought second-hand.