Building professionals’ attitudes towards the use of wood in building design and construction in Taiwan

This study aims to analyse the attitudes of building professionals towards the use of wood in building design and construction in Taiwan, and to investigate how professionals’ backgrounds affect their attitudes upon the wood usage using statistical analysis. 123 valid questionnaires were collected from various building professionals, including architecture students, architects, interior designers and building construction engineers. It has been shown that wood is regarded as the most environmentally-friendly material in building design and construction. ‘Beauty’ and ‘proprietor’ are the most two essential factors identified by professionals that may influence their decisions to use wood, whereas the deconstruction phase and post-use of demolished wood are considered less important. With respect to the wood utilisation in construction, building professionals prefer using wood in the substructure to main structure at present. On the other hand, the differences between professionals’ experience in designing wood houses or wood elements, and their attitudes towards the importance of reasons in using wood are generally insignificant, except for the easy assembly (p = 0.03) and easy disassembly (p = 0.02) of wood construction. Professionals in favour of wood substitution are more likely to choose wood in column, beam, window, outdoor wall and door. Moreover, there are significant differences between professionals’ occupations and their opinions upon the recyclability issues of materials (p = 0.02). In the future, more sufficient communications are required through the design process among various professional groups.