Positive feedback - the 11^th WOOD CONFERENCE Cape Town was held for the first time as an online event  

The organising team draws a positive balance of the 11th Wood Conference held in online format on Thursday, 24 February 2022. The varied programme with speakers from South Africa, Finland, Norway, America and Switzerland on the topic of "Timber - the key for sustainable and qualitative growth" was followed by over 900 participants. Of these, 650 actively exchanged information with more than 2500 messages in the chat and asked questions about the content of the speakers.

Hannu Garny led the day's programme, which was divided into two parts, in a skilful and professional manner.

A variety of applications, buildings and projects in wood were presented. Examples such as New World Luxury references or locally adapted living spaces, the advantages of wood in pre-production as well as digital planning models showed insightful solutions for the application of wood. The need of the growing population, especially in Central Africa, demands adequate living space and promises potential for the renewable CO2 neutral building material. Due to sustainably managed forest areas in Nordic countries, the use of wood can be further developed as a multifunctional recyclable building and wood-based material. The Future Project "Embrace - A safe place for Children and Women" presented by Siv Helene Stangeland met with great interest. This is another new project initiated and supported by the Wood Student Foundation. The building, which is planned as a wooden structure, will offer women and children in the townships of Cape Town safe living and housing space.

The gratifyingly large number of participants at the online conference shows that the Wood Conference Cape Town has established itself among architects, planners, investors, builders, teachers and students as one of the most important knowledge platforms for sustainable building in South Africa. The event is a permanent fixture in their agenda to learn about trends and building with the multifunctional material wood, to be inspired and to exchange first-hand experience and knowledge.

Despite the fact that everything went smoothly digitally and there was a lively exchange of ideas via the online platform, the final survey of participants conducted by Roger Kuratle showed that the wish for a conference to be held physically in Cape Town is still in the foreground.

The initiator George Kuratle and the organising team are looking forward to planning the event - which is popular with architects and planners in South Africa - at the Convenience Centre Cape Town again next year. We are convinced that an informative programme with renowned speakers from the industry will attract interest and that the record number of participants will be exceeded once again.

We sincerely thank our market partners for their support and look forward to planning the 12^th Wood Conference with you on 28 February 2023.

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