Basajaun - Sustainable wood construction for rural development and urban transformation

16.112022

Project completed

Basajaun is a major European innovation action about sustainable building with wood. The main objective is to demonstrate how wood construction chains can be optimized to foster both rural development and urban transformation whilst being connected with sustainable forest management in Europe.

The global purpose of BASAJAUN is to foster the adoption of wood as raw material in products and building solutions and demonstrate that they contribute to increase the quality, habitability and performance of the European building stock with many benefits for healthier, sustainable cities. Better integration of wood products in the construction sector stimulates more sustainable development of rural regions.

BASAJAUN targets the opportunity to generate a higher awareness for the benefits of sustainable forest use and wood construction by attaining a wider audience. In a nutshell, the project is expected to contribute to the following relevant impacts at different levels:

Increase resource and/or energy efficiency and added value and minimising pollution and the environmental footprint in the construction sector in the cities by 2030;
Enhance connectivity of rural-urban areas and their overall contribution to a resilient, circular and competitive, forest-based bioeconomy, by 2025;
Enhance contribution of forest-based sector to long-term climate change mitigation, adaptation and rural development objectives;
In the long-term, prompt a sizeable positive change to European landscapes and economies, by keeping the countryside green and serving to make the cities greener, and increasing the share of both decent and green jobs;
Advance available solutions from TRL 4-5 to TRL 6-7 to demonstrate the viability of upscaling the manufacture of innovative wood-based solutions for the construction sector.

Demo building

A full-scale demonstration project will be realized with multiple partners using innovative architecture. This southern demo building is being built in Bordeaux, France, in cooperation with the Departement de Gironde. The demonstration is devoted to products manufacturing regarding scalability and replicability in a system prototype within an operational environment.