The best wooden house of the year is located in Brandýsek near Kladno

Prague - The winner of the Wooden House Competition 2010 in the category of built buildings was an energy-efficient family house in Brandýs nad Labem on Kladno. In the design category, the expert jury selected Ondřej Mundl's project as the best. The results of the competition were announced today by the organizers at the 5th International Exhibition of Wooden Buildings, Structures, and Materials in Letňany, Prague.
    "The awarded designs in both categories provide a good answer to both professionals and the general public on how modern wooden constructions can represent a newly developing lifestyle - living in a house built with responsibility towards the environment, in a wooden house," stated architect and jury chairman Pavel Horák.
    In addition to their own designs, competitors had to fill out a protocol for the building's energy label, document the thermal technical properties of the proposed constructions and their protection against internal moisture, develop a fire safety solution for the building, and calculate the statics of the main load-bearing parts. "As part of the proposals, there was also the requirement to present solutions for the most critical details in the constructions of the houses," added Petr Vala, vice-chairman of the Association of Prefabricated House Suppliers.
    According to Tomáš Pařík, chairman of the Board of the Wood for Life Foundation, an average of 65 cubic meters of wood in the form of roundwood is consumed for one wooden family house. According to expert data, 0.6 cubic meters of wood grows every second in Czech forests. "This means that every 108 seconds, our forests produce as much wood as is consumed for one family house. The wood needed for the construction of 1,000 family houses grows in the forests in 30 hours," noted Pařík.
    Builders associated in the Association of Prefabricated House Suppliers increased the number of built wooden housing constructions by approximately 12 percent year-on-year to 843 houses in 2009.
    The third edition of the competition was organized by the Wood for Life Foundation, Moravian-Silesian Woodworking Cluster, and the Association of Prefabricated House Suppliers.