World of Wood

World of Wood Festival (WOW) App

World of Wood (WOW) Festival is a celebration of the positive impact that global timber and global forests have in tackling the climate challenges we face.

The vital UN climate change conference COP26 is hosted by the UK and takes place in November 2021. Housed at the Building Centre in London from October through to December 2021, and presented on COP Blue Zone stages, the World of Wood Festival engages, connects and informs how wood is a key nature-based solution which will help us towards our 2050 zero global carbon emissions target.

The WOW app is the immersive centrepiece of the World of Wood Festival. Its augmented reality (AR) animations and experiences have been created to demonstrate the astonishing benefits of forests and wood products.

The WOW app interacts with touchpoints in the WOW brochure and interactive displays at the Building Centre in London. Use the app to experience the ‘Virtual Timber Beacon’; a full-scale representation of the real Timber Beacon in AR which virtual visitors can explore and learn more.

We’re using Augmented Reality in an impactful, but simple way. The process is easy to access and navigate, engaging, memorable and motivational.

The WOW app is free and available in English at every app store globally to allow everyone to access the WOW festival and to spread our positive message that wood = hope!

Our Story

Climate change is the focus of the world and solutions are needed to help meet the zero global carbon emissions by 2050.

Wood, our oldest, most versatile and trusted building material, has become one of our most innovative and important materials in building and construction through 21st century wood products such as CLT (Cross Laminated Timber) and LVL (Laminated Veneer Lumber).

These wood products have the tensile strength and versatility of steel and concrete, but without the enormous carbon emissions steel and concrete cause within the built environment.

Wood stores carbon very effectively. In fact, the more wood we use, the more CO2 we can remove from the atmosphere. For example, if 200,000 new homes were built using timber products, those houses would store almost 4,000,000 tonnes of carbon.

It may sound counter-intuitive to use more wood - after all, we know that forests are the ‘lungs’ of the world. But increasing the responsible use of sustainably sourced wood globally fosters better governance frameworks for the management of all forests, particularly those in the tropics.

In encouraging responsible trade, forests are valued higher, harvested more selectively and, even as we use and make more wood products, the size of our forests will grow, equivalent to planting 5 trees for every 2 trees that are harvested.

The World of Wood Festival is a global knowledge sharing initiative hosted by the international timber and wood products industries. It is led by the UK Timber Trade Federation (TTF) and the European Woodworking Industry Confederation (CEI Bois), in collaboration with over 40 timber and forest associations from Washington DC to Brussels, the Congo Basin to Vietnam.

Using wood is not the only answer to averting climate change, but it will make a massive impact in removing carbon from the air, decarbonising construction and helping maintain and increase the global forest ‘lungs of the earth’ through governance.

We only have one planet. We have to help it, and through wood, there is hope.