Project description

Sweden, Estonia and Ukraine all possess a rich historic wooden architecture and building tradition and face common challenges concerning its protection and preservation. Even if traditional wooden buildings are well examined in some areas, knowledge of their potential for sustainable construction in particular traditional treatments of wood, maintenance methods as well as circular production, is in its early stages. Sharing information, experience as well as results of different strategies tested in different countries with similar background and conditions will be of great value particularly within the framework of energy efficiency and meeting modern comfort standards without losing heritage values. Traditional wooden architecture is regionally diverse so transnational cooperation in this field will allow us to compare features which are hard to see on a national level. While Sweden and Estonia may share a valuable experience in conservation and preservation approaches, Ukraine offers an opportunity to discover unknown and untouched examples of wooden architecture. In Sweden and Estonia modern wooden technologies have developed, while Ukraine has uninterrupted traditions of treatments of wood still in practice. Knowledge and experience in each country will be a valuable contribution for a sustainable building strategy to be adopted in each country, which can also lead to new business possibilities such as developing sustainable building products to be exported.

While wood is used in almost all small scale buildings as the structural material in Sweden and it is a sustainable building material, the other components of the building are not chosen from a sustainable approach, instead these materials, as well as, their treatments are often a climate strain. To choose environmentally friendly treatments is crucial since this is a procedure that will be repeated many times over the building’s lifespan. Traditional methods offer solutions that have been neglected since the introduction of, one example, the environmentally unfriendly acrylic paint that contributes to the increase of plastic in our environment and has become dominant.

The use of environmentally friendly materials in renovations, reuse old materials and building components is a common praxis in restorations of historic buildings and should be used in up-grading existing ones as well as when building new. This will preserve the environment and develope our cultural heritage, and create a healthy indoor climate for the residents. Estonia has successfully implemented a "sustainable renovation concept" which originated from an Estonian-Swedish cooperation project, Österled. It continues to gain popularity and it is ready to be shared and also developed further in collaboration with a wider range of experts

The recently established climate targets in Europe have led to a major renovation wave, which with too narrow focus may cause historical buildings to lose their traditional appearance or even disappear entirely.