The completion in London in 2008 of an eight-floor block using cross laminated timber pieces represented a milestone in the gradual comeback of wood as a widely used architectural material. Other such projects were quick to follow suit, setting in motion a process that has culminated with Forté, the apartment building in the city of Melbourne which with its nine stories holds the current world record for tallest wooden construction.

Here in Spain, in turn, in the historic quarter of Lérida, a six-level housing development has recently been carried out with solid chunks of cross laminated timber (see Arquitectura Viva 143) manufactured by the Austrian company KLH. The more critical aspect of the building’s structural design, which constitutes the principal disadvantage of all wooden systems – namely their lateral shifting – has in this case been addressed by entrusting the rigidity of the construction to the combined effect of party walls and elevator shafts, formed by solid pieces of wood connected to one another by slabs of a monolithic form.