USDA says Go Wood!

In a press release published yesterday, Tom Vilsack, current USDA Agriculture Secretary, laid out plans to increase wood use in buildings. This is of course great news for anyone related to wood research, manufacturing and construction but above all it’s great news for the environment. After all, wood is the only major building material that’s […] Read more..

APA creates App – Get your wood products references on the iPhone

APA (The Engineered Wood Association) just released an iPhone/iPod Touch app, which gives easy access to its product reports. Another feature is a “click to call” button to reach APA’s tech support. Here’s the official announcement: The first APA App – featuring APA Products Reports®, is now available for iPhone®, iPad®, and iPod touch® mobile […] Read more..

Dealing with winter in New England

Will this winter ever end? New England has so far surely seen an amazing accumulation of snow this season. Every few days, the Boston Globe reports that we have surpassed the annual average snowfall by yet again a few inches. Let’s see when we will finally see soil again. For now, we have yet another […] Read more..

Wood Design Photo Series: Austria Passive House Whistler

On a recent visit to Whistler, BC (yep, the place where the 2010 Winter Olympics were held), I had the fortune to be given an impromptu tour of the Austria Passive House, a building constructed for the Olympics and used as “home base” for Austrian media during the events. This 2700 s.f., two-story building is […] Read more..

Go to Europe for wood

Image: Forum Holzbau While we are (slowly) preparing for our trip to the World Conference on Timber Engineering in Italy this summer, I realized that I never posted about the two upcoming wood-building -related conferences in Europe. If you have some spare travel money (yep, flights are not cheap this summer) and some time in […] Read more..

Wood Design & Building Magazine Online

I must somehow have overlooked this one. Apparently since last fall, Canadian Wood Council’s Wood Design & Building magazine has been posting their issues online using a free web-based viewer. If you don’t know this magazine yet – it is a beautifully presented resource for North American wood design and architecture that gets published approximately four […] Read more..

Wood Design Award 2008-09 book is available

Just after I posted about the current wood awards, the Canadian Wood Council came out with a book showcasing winners from the 2008-09 season. These books are always a beautiful reference and source for many inspirations. If you want to get one, follow this link. I have also been told that students get a 40% […] Read more..