Share of timber construction Multi-storey timber housing in Austria

Share of multi-storey timber construction in Austria 2008 – 2019

Overall results for Austria and federal states

Authors: Jörg Koppelhuber / Nina Grünefeldt / Marco Bok

Download:Share of timber construction in multi-storey timber housing in Austria 2008 – 2019

This publication provides an overall picture of the development of Austrian timber construction between 2008 and 2019. In a first step, this study derives the term multi-storey timber housing on the basis of relevant definitions in directives, laws and regulations in Austria and defines it for a clear classification.

In the course of the complete survey of all timber buildings that meet the definition, those buildings with their specific characteristics of timber construction that were completed in the period 2008 to 2019 and meet this definition were recorded and statistically taken into account in all nine federal states. In Austria, a total of 390 construction projects were completed in the period under review from 2008 to 2019, which correspond to the underlying definition of this study. A total of 670 buildings with around 8,400 residential units were fully surveyed. These have a total gross floor area of around 807,000 m² or 764,000 m² of usable space. In detail, the average apartment in a timber building has 104 m² gross floor area or 76 m² net floor area. The average timber residential building is being constructed with 3 storeys and comprises 21 residential units. During the period under review, around 650 construction projects were realized each year using wood.

In addition to these averaged figures for Austria as a whole, it can be seen that there are significant differences in the implementation of multi-storey timber residential buildings in individual federal states. Numerous detailed results such as The following table shows the building systems used, roof shapes, distribution of builders and the combination of wood with mineral building materials in detail for each federal state and for Austria as a whole. The corresponding results can be found in the following chapters.

The trend in the development of multi-storey timber construction in Austria is therefore positive, even if the share of total construction activity in this segment is still low, but has been increasing over the years. Large-volume residential construction in timber is therefore becoming increasingly important, as in addition to technical and operational advantages, the issues of sustainability, carbon footprint and resource conservation are now also triggering a great deal of momentum in the construction industry, making the call for sustainable building products much louder.