500,000,000 TREES

It’s all down to a simple golden rule: never cut more timber than is produced by nature. That’s the basic principle underlying the production chain that cultivates the forests, transforms the wood and sells it. For example, 45,000 to 50,000 trees are taken every year from the Val di Fiemme forest in Trentino. That may sound a lot, but they are still less than those growing in a year. Their wood is highly valued, thanks to the geographical position and the special microclimate of the area. One curious note: the city of Venice still rests on larch tree trunks that came originally from this forest. Here the trees grow in a very regular way and the wood develops a particularly compact and strong structure, to the point that some young entrepreneurs in the valley came up with the idea of replacing with this wood the bricks and reinforced concrete commonly used to build houses. And they do not build just mountain huts, but six-storey buildings and hotels with the Sistema Costruttivo Fiemme - Fiemme Building System (SOFIE) developed at the Istituto per la Valorizzazione del Legno e delle Specie Arboree - Institute for the Promotion of Wood and Plant Species (IVALSA) of the National Research Council, based on the most surprising environmental and anti-seismic criteria. Also in Trentino was created ARCA, ARchitettura–Comfort–Ambiente (Architecture-Comfort-Environment), the first Italian certification system of buildings and components made of high quality wood.