Wood in general is a traditional building material in Northern Europe including Latvia and other Baltic countries, but nowadays it is used less in Latvia than in other EU countries. There are many forests in Latvia and a well-developed timber industry. Latvian society is enthusiastic about eco-materials, and qualified architects and engineers are ready to work with timber structures. However, wood is mainly used for small buildings and residential construction, but minimally in public and multi-apartment buildings. The study was carried out among architects and other stakeholders in Latvia to analyze their impact on the selection of building material. Thirty-eight interviews were conducted, questionnaire among 73 respondents carried out, and discussion in a focus group was held to find out the main reason and barriers for using wood for buildings in Latvia less than in other EU countries. During the research the main influencing factors for choosing wood constructions were identified and seven main barriers formulated. The study results were compared with the results of similar studies in other countries. Two of the seven barriers in Latvia – stereotypes and legislation – were not mentioned in other studies, nevertheless, these are the most frequently mentioned obstacles in the Latvian case.

9(1): 9-15Trees do absorb more CO 2 in the growing phase and the absorption slows down when trees mature. From the perspective of climate change and efficient use of resources, the harvested biomass should be used as material for as long as possible in order to replace more fossil energy intensive materials in structural components (e.g. bearing and enclosing structures), before they are used to generate energy (Werner et al. 2010;Poudel 2014;Upton et al. 2008).There are many forests and a well-developed timber industry in Latvia, and adjoining Baltic States. Several companies produce timber products as well as panels and modules for the construction industry, but about 90% of production is exported to other EU countries (Andersons 2012). Latvian society does not seem to care about climate change, its CO 2, footprint or the Life Cycle index, but is positively disposed towards ecology and sustainability in many sectors -i.e. food, clothing, decoration materials and private house construction. Wood in architecture has been used for centuries, but nowadays wood is used less than other materials among government and municipal procurement projects and private business projects as well.The information on the history of wooden architecture is available in various sources. The oldest wooden house remains were found at the Latvian Lubana Plain archaeological excavations and are attributable to the Mesolithic and Neolithic eras (from the 9th millennium to the second Abstract. Wood is a historic building material used throughout the Baltic States. Latvia's forests cover 52% of the country and there are more than 30 producers of timber constructions materials, but during the last two decades the use wood in Latvian architecture has declined when compared to other countries in Europe. In particular -Latvian architects avoid the use of timber in public and multi-unit apartment buildings. Wood is a sustainable and technically appropriate building material for many types of buildings including complex construction, but in Latvian architecture it is used more in facades as a finishing material. This study analyses buildings built during the last few decades, conducted a number of interviews and found that the percentage of wooden buildings in the total building volume in Latvia is less than 5% in both apartment buildings and public sector buildings.Restrictive legislation and negative stereotypes were mentioned as reasons as to why architects avoid the use of wood. For the survey results seven Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art competition projects were analysed as well.

Latvia and Lithuania are producers of glulam and both have managed building projects with glued timber structures, but only as few as 1−2 projects per year. As it is difficult to find information about glulam projects it is possible that many projects are not known even to the audience of architects. The aim of this study was to collect information related to the glulam projects in both countries and the questionnaire was used to get the architects’ opinion on the use of timber and glulam.

The wooden architecture of the 19th century is mentioned in the UNESCO World Heritage description of Riga among the criteria that makes the Capital city of Outstanding Universal Value. So far, 3 500 wooden buildings in the city have survived. This paper summarizes information on the renovation of four wooden buildings. The aim of this paper is to give a closer overview on the impact of ownership, funding source and location in the city of the building on the process of renovation and architectural change. The internationally approved renovation principles in the renovation of wooden buildings in Riga are not often taken into account.