The most impressive examples of wooden architecture in the world

Wood as a construction material has always been used, and throughout the planet, there are excellent examples of architectural works that use this material. However, it is currently beginning to re-emerge with new and impressive projects.

Wood as a structural element is increasingly technically advanced, allowing its use to implement large constructions. We are not only talking about small homes but about more significant buildings, such as museums or even skyscrapers.

Today there are several high-level architects who use wood in many of their architectural projects. Names like Kengo Kuma, AnnaLisa Meyboom, Thomas Herzog, Vicente Guallart, Kivi Sotamaa, Gilles Retsin or Casey Rehm, are just some of them. But what about the most notable projects in this sense? Let's get to know some of them…

In the American city of Milwaukee there is a 25-story, 86 meter or 282 foot high residential building and the structure is made entirely of solid wood. Here you can see the building during its construction in 2021.

This building houses luxury homes, a commercial area and a high-rise swimming pool. The building is built and finished (in the picture you can see it in 2022), it is the tallest building made of wood, beating out the Mjøstårnet tower in Norway.

Photo: By SidewalkMD - Own work, Wikimedia Commons

Mjøstårnet was inaugurated in 2019 in the city of Brumunddal and has a height almost the same as that of the Ascent, with 85.4 meters or 280 feet, although, in this case, with 18 floors in which there is a hotel, apartments, offices and an indoor pool. It was designed by the Norwegian studio Voll Arkitekter for AB Invest, and Moelven Limtre installed its wooden structure.

This is another sizeable residential tower standing at 100 meters or 320 feet tall. It was planned in the Swiss city of Winterthur and designed by the firm Schmidt Hammer Lassen, creators of the Malmö Live Concert Hall in Sweden, which is pictured here. It is another excellent example of a colossal work made of wood.  However, the group's next creation is a  tower called Rocket & Tigerli, will have 32 floors and a structure with a solid wood supporting system.

The Aspen Art Museum, in the state of Colorado (United States), created in 1979, is the work of Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, winner of the Pritzker Prize for architecture in 2014, and stands out in its construction for its woven wood screen and by the roof frame, also made of wood.

This huge pergola-shaped structure is made of laminated wood and concrete located in Seville (Spain). It is 150 meters/492 feet long, 70 meters/229 feet wide and a height of about 26 meters or 85 feet. This structure houses a traditional market, a square for shows and the Antiquarium Archaeological Museum, in addition to offering a great viewpoint of the city at the top.

Located in the French city of Metz, this museum of modern and contemporary art is a branch of the Pompidou Center in Paris designed by Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill. In it, the structure of its roof, composed of 16 kilometers of glued laminated wood, resembling the grille of a Chinese hat, stands out especially.

Designed by New York architect David Rockwell, inspired by the narrative spirit of the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) talk, this curious theater has a wooden structure made through a frame system that was built in record time: only six days.

This is probably the most curious building of all those on this list. Built of wood from the inside out, it is a replica of Noah's Ark designed by Troyer Group, a megastructure 137 meters or 550 feet long, 23m or 75 feet wide by 14 meters or 45 feet tall. It is located in Kentucky (United States) and which houses a museum about creation according to Christianity.

The Japanese architect Kengo Kuma is a true expert in wooden constructions and, as an example, there is the work carried out for the Sunny Hills store in the city of Tokyo, a small building made in the shape of a bamboo basket in which the traditional method of Japanese wooden architecture is used.

Another good example of Kengo Kuma's work is the Tokyo National Stadium, where the Japanese architect uses a covering with cedar boards for its exterior, with an interior where wood is also the protagonist with a roof made up of laminated wood trusses and metal connectors.

The Matteo Thun & Partners studio conceived these two towers for the Austrian town of Katschberg and which act as a symbolic gateway between the two provinces of Salzburg and Carinthia. It is the expansion of a hotel that already existed with structures made of prefabricated wooden walls and slabs which are made up of a light wooden framework.

This curious hotel, located in an idyllic location surrounded by nature at the northern entrance to the Torres del Paine National Park (Chile), was designed by architect Cazú Zegers. It has a curved, sinuous shape that blends with the landscape and is entirely covered by a plank of washed beech wood.