Theme 2019 “Who will build our cities tomorrow?”

Wood in construction, more than a material, a way of life; more than a material, a true leap for a local and sustainable economic sector. To convince real estate developers and their customers, it will change paradigm, out of comparisons based solely on a cost per m² and put forward a model of commercialization based on the entire life cycle by integrating the cost of construction, cost of use (heating, …), the possibilities of modularity and the cost of deconstruction / recycling.

The wooden building must differentiate itself from “classic” buildings and embody a new relationship to the city, nature, construction and interior and exterior design. In order to get young buyers looking for new ways of life and consumption to take an interest in buying housing in wooden buildings, it will be necessary to astonish them, astonish them, etc. The challenge is therefore much more global than managing the competition that exists between different materials: we must invent an economic, social, technical and environmental model to convince. Wallonia has 556,000 ha of forest representing more than 111 million m³ of wood.

The Walloon forests are productive and far from being overexploited, the volume of available wood is growing and remains lower than the annual increase. If we add the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and the French Grand-Est, we can consider a fairly coherent forest of 2,500,000 ha and a volume of standing timber estimated at about 490,000,000 m³ which produces 15,600 annually. 000 m³ of which we harvest roughly 56% today (a little less than 9,000,000 m³ per year). Our timber industry must continue to develop, innovate, attract talent and the forest world must guarantee a supply with volumes, quantities and prices that provide an income to one and a quality raw material to others.