How modular homes are rebuilding Portugal’s ruins

Summary

Business Daily — How Modular Homes Are Rebuilding Portugal’s Ruins

Date: February 26, 2026
Host: Alistair Leathead (BBC World Service)

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Episode Overview

In this episode, host Alistair Leathead investigates the growing trend of modular wooden homes in rural Portugal. The episode explores how these prefabricated structures are revitalizing abandoned land and tackling the housing crisis, while offering a sustainable solution in the face of labor shortages and climate concerns. Listeners hear perspectives from leading architects, Portuguese manufacturers, and Swedish developers, uncovering economic, environmental, and social implications of this “wooden house revolution.”

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Return of Wood as a Building Material

• Shift from Industrial Era: Traditionally, wood was the primary building material until the Industrial Revolution, which repurposed it mainly for fuel.
  • “The Industrial Revolution changed the status of wood from the world’s best building material to fuel, to make steel. We’ve woken up and realized that we have this miraculous material that can hoard carbon instead of produce it.” (Prof. Alex de Rijke, 01:34)
• Environmental Appeal: Modern wood construction is recognized for its carbon storage capabilities, contrasting with carbon-intensive steel and concrete.

2. The Rural Housing Crisis & Modular Solution

• Portugal’s Land Patterns: Rural Portugal faces depopulation due to inheritance laws and urban migration, leaving scattered plots with ruined houses ripe for redevelopment.
  • “This part of Portugal is quite remote...it’s left many small plots like this unoccupied and often with a ruined house on them.” (Alistair Leathead, 03:00)
• Prefabricated Advantage: Modular homes built in factories are both quicker and cheaper due to centralized labor and minimized on-site delays.
  • “With the labor shortage, it’s easier to have people that are working here and living nearby.” (Amaro Santos, Joular, 12:03)
  • “Modular houses ready built in factories are cheaper and quicker solutions to a housing crisis.” (Alistair Leathead, 02:01)

3. Architects Championing Timber

• Case Study: Prof. Alex de Rijke
  • Built his first all-plywood house decades ago and later spearheaded advances in engineered timber, especially Cross Laminated Timber (CLT).
    • “I started my career about 30 years ago...being dubbed the King of Ply because I rebuilt my mother’s house entirely out of plywood.” (Alex de Rijke, 03:36)
    • “CLT is cross laminated timber...which is planks of wood laid up in different directions...like a jumbo plywood, scaled up.” (Alex de Rijke, 06:11)
  • His experimental flat-pack “Naked House” is set to be rebuilt on his Portuguese plot using sustainable, screw-piled foundations to avoid concrete.
    • “I’ll put some screw piles in…the great invention because obviously you avoid concrete. Very high on my list of priorities. There’s too much carbon involved in concrete and steel.” (Alex de Rijke, 05:31)

4. Inside Portugal’s Modular Home Industry

• Joular — Family-run Factory (Interview: Amaro Santos)
  • Supplies hundreds of modular timber structures annually, from schools to private homes—“assembling a house in one day.”
    • “We’re going to split [a 45-meter long building] in, I guess, 15 different sections, different modules.” (Amaro Santos, 11:20)
    • “It’s cheaper for the client. I can manage quality much better here and I have them under our supervision, which is...a much higher quality, for sure.” (12:00)
  • Labor shortages push the shift towards factory building; half their clients are international buyers.
  • Houses are fitted with insulation, electrics, and sometimes furniture, ready for immediate assembly onsite.
    • “Usually these houses are assembled in one day on site because we are always installing it on top of ground screws that we put on soil with no concrete whatsoever.” (13:19)

5. Sustainability & Forestry

• Imported Materials: Due to the low quality of domestic eucalyptus, Joular imports timber mostly from Finland.
  • “It’s a shame we have to import wood...but we use mainly Finland as a provider...the certainty that we can provide to the customer.” (Amaro Santos, 14:15)
• Broader Environmental Concerns:
  • Timber's carbon storage vs. the environmental cost of forest exploitation and imports.
  • The Swedish model: strong focus on sustainable forestry, with strict tree replanting rules—now planting four trees for every one felled.
    • “I actually called the factory...how much time does it take for the Swedish forest to grow 2,000 cubic meters of CLT, which this house contains? And they said 44 seconds.” (Sandra Frank, 15:55)
    • “For each tree you take down, you have to plant a new one...today we are planting about four trees for each tree that you take down.” (Sandra Frank, 17:26)

6. Fire Safety & Insurance

• Fire Risk: 2023 wildfires reached the edge of Prof. de Rijke's land, highlighting risks in a warming climate.
  • Reed misconception: “Wood is much better behaved in a fire than, say, steel...engineered timber just chars and protects itself, just like these trees here.” (Alex de Rijke, 18:36)
• Changing Attitudes: Insurers and mortgage companies are gradually warming up to the safety and resilience of engineered wood structures.

7. Regulatory and Economic Outlook

• Legal and Bureaucratic Hurdles: Bureaucracy can slow innovation, but “regulation can also promote sustainability.” (Alistair Leathead, 19:47)
• Portugal’s Path Forward: With increasing demand, land availability, and labor shortages, the country is well-placed to expand its “wooden house revolution”—provided it invests in quality timber production.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Alex de Rijke on Building with Timber:
  “People worry about the strength of timber completely unnecessarily. If you look at Scandinavian cultures, they’ve always built in wood...temples that are one and a half thousand years old. And this is the same timber.” (06:09)
• Sandra Frank on Sustainability:
  “I realized that we didn’t question using concrete or steel, which is also materials that you take from nature, but it never grows back. It’s an ending...If we can start using growing materials instead of ending materials, that would be a lovely thing.” (16:00)
• On Fire Safety:
  “Ironically, you know, wood is much better behaved in a fire than, say, steel. You know, steel collapses suddenly at 500 Celsius, whereas engineered timber mass timber just chars and protects itself.” (18:36)

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Important Segment Timestamps

• Introduction & Scene-Setting in Portugal: [01:18-03:00]
• Interview: Prof. Alex de Rijke on Timber Techniques: [03:24-08:06]
• Joular Factory Tour (Amaro Santos): [10:19-14:49]
• Sustainability Conversation with Sandra Frank (Sweden): [15:03-17:55]
• Discussion on Fire Risks and Future Outlook: [18:03-19:47]

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Episode Summary

This episode provides an insightful look into how modular timber homes are revitalizing abandoned rural land in Portugal. Through vivid interviews with pioneering architects and manufacturers, listeners get an in-depth understanding of the technical, economic, and ecological forces driving the “wooden house revolution”—including the challenges of sourcing sustainable materials, overcoming labor shortages, navigating regulations, and deploying new construction techniques. The conversation ties local trends to broader lessons from Swedish forestry and European innovation, offering an optimistic, practical vision for sustainable development.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC World Service with me, Alistair Leathead. Today I'm meeting one of my neighbors in this remote rural part of Portugal I call home to learn why so many people here are building wooden houses.

[C]

So the Industrial Revolution changed the status of wood from the world's best building material to fuel, to make steel. We've woken up and realized that we have this miraculous material that can hoard carbon instead of produce it.

[B]

It's a lesson Sweden's been learning for many years.

[D]

36% of all the total global carbon dioxide emissions is from construction sites globally.

[B]

Modular houses ready built in factories are cheaper and quicker solutions to a housing crisis.

[E]

With the labor shortage, it's easier to have people that are working here and living nearby.

[B]

And under regulatory pressure, even big construction companies now starting to see the wood for the trees. That's all coming up on today's Business Daily.

[F]

Well, it's a beautiful sunny day here

[B]

in Sao Teatonio, my local town in the southwestern corner of Alentejo in Portugal, close to the coast, near to the

[F]

Algarve, one of the most unlikely places you'd perhaps find one of the world's most well known professors of wood architecture, Alex Derdike. He's bought a little plot and it's

[B]

so new he hasn't Even got an address yet. So his directions for me to find him are head towards the cemetery and

[F]

I will be the last one alive

[B]

before you get there. This part of Portugal is quite remote. A lot of people left to the cities or to work abroad from the 1960s onwards. Many young people still move away today. Together with the way the land's inherited by multiple family members, it's left many small plots like this unoccupied and often with a ruined house on them. That is what Alex bought.

[C]

Hello.

[F]

Good to see you.

[B]

How's things?

[C]

Alright.

[F]

I chose the right footwear as well, with willies.

[B]

It's been a wet winter so far, so it was a muddy walk to see his plans.

[C]

I started my career about 30 years ago, being dubbed the King of Ply because I rebuilt my mother's house entirely out of plywood. That was dubbed by the press, by the way. And now, 30 years on, I'm professor of timber architecture, with quite a few wooden buildings in between.

[B]

Alex der Reike teaches at Holland's Delft University. He's won a Sterling Prize, Britain's top architecture award, for rebuilding the historic wooden Hastings Pier, which was almost destroyed by fire. But it was his mum's house where it all started.

[C]

Now, it's a great project because when you study architecture, you're never even asked to pick up any materials. So for me, it was super important to make all the time. So I've always been half academic, half practice and half building, if you're allowed to have three.

[F]

And this is perhaps the most. I'm also ambitious, but certainly the most buildy. We're walking through your land here. It's beautiful. It's cork oak trees, there's some eucalyptus

[B]

up there, there's pine trees.

[F]

So we're going down the hill further?

[C]

Yes, stop here and this is where the house will be, above our heads on stilts.

[F]

Wow.

[C]

So it's obviously extremely hilly topography here, as everywhere in Alentejo.

[F]

It's a very steep hill and there's a couple of old caulk oak trees

[C]

here on the hillside. I want this wooden house to nestle amongst the canopies of these trees, use them for shade and like friendly neighbours, you know, you see them when you look out of the window. I think views are best framed, so if you've got trees close to the house, then it's an even better view.

[F]

So how big is the house going to be and how are you going to put it into this hillside? Is this rock or how do you do all that?

[C]

I'll Put some screw piles in. They're a great invention because obviously you avoid concrete. Very high on my list of priorities. There's too much carbon involved in concrete and steel. So I'll buy some secondhand ones, put them into the hill here and then stand timber columns on top. People worry about the strength of timber completely unnecessarily. If you look at Scandinavian cultures, they've always built in wood. If you look at Japanese history of architecture, they have temples that are one and a half thousand years old. And this is the same timber. So it's all about proper detailing and

[F]

what will it look like, how big will it be?

[C]

In a moment I'm going to take you to where it's stored. Okay. It was the first flat pack CLT house. CLT is cross laminated timber. So timber lamination started about 100 years ago.

[F]

This is back to your plywood. It's basically sticking layers of wood on top of each other. So gluing them together or pressing them together.

[C]

Exactly. Plywood is veneers, thin veneers. So you take the tree and you rotary cut it like a pencil being sharpened and then those shavings are glued together in different directions and that must makes it strong, but kind of exciting. Renaissance that we're in at the moment has meant there's a much bigger family of engineered timber. And one of the products is called clt. That's cross laminated timber, which is planks of wood laid up in different directions. So each layer is in an opposite direction at 90 degrees. And that makes a bit like a jumbo plywood, scaled up plywood. And when that came out in the 90s, I was immediately interested.

[B]

Alex made the first CLT building in London in 2006. A school. And then the first flat packed CLT structure.

[C]

I did an experimental house for an exhibition in Oslo called Naked House, where the whole house was made of cross laminated timber panels. And working with the logic that for every human activity you need daylight and furniture, I basically cut the furniture from the walls. So think table cut from wall becomes window, which lights the table. So the off cut is the furniture and therefore no waste. And I took it to the UK and stored it for about a decade and now I've brought it here.

[F]

Right, so that's the house that you're going to put up here?

[C]

Yeah, I'll show you the pieces in a moment.

[F]

That's great.

[B]

You're listening to Business daily on the BBC World Service.

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[B]

I'm Alastair Leathead and today I'm looking at Portugal's wooden house revolution. Professor Alex de Reyke is just one of many people moving to the countryside, buying up an abandoned piece of land and with a shortage of builders and labourers are turning to wooden flat pack or modular houses like in Comporta, a bit further north of us where American actor George Clooney and Britain's Princess Eugenie have property. One of the biggest suppliers is a Portuguese family company called Joular. Their factories in Azambuja, north of Lisbon.

[E]

My name is Amaro Santos. I'm one of the shareholders of Jular. Right now we are standing in the middle of a classroom. I think it's something around 30 square meters. It's kindergarten. And the modules here where we are standing on, they belong to the first floor and they're going to leave the factory 95% already finished. You can see all the walls, wiring and all the infrastructure already in place as well as the thermal insulation.

[C]

Yeah.

[F]

Now this is a Huge building. We come into your factory here and obviously there's a lot of wood everywhere, people cutting wood.

[B]

But this is.

[F]

This is a huge building that you've assembled in the factory. How do you get this to the school to deliver it?

[E]

Actually, we break it in sections. We call it modules. So each model has about 3.5 meters wide and 4 meters high. So we have to have special lorries. You can see this is a 45 meter long building.

[C]

Wow.

[E]

And actually we're going to split it In, I guess, 15 different sections, different modules.

[F]

And the idea of doing all this, as you've said here, putting in, I can see the green and the red colorful tubes that electric wires go into and all the insulation already in the walls.

[B]

Why do you do that here rather

[F]

than doing it on site?

[E]

Because it's cheaper for the client. I can manage quality much better here and I have them under our supervision, which is result. The end result is a much higher quality, for sure. With the labor shortage that we have on the market, it's easier. Easier to have people that are working here and living nearby. It's very difficult to find contractors that are willing to be displaced for, I would say, a couple of months or even more. And it makes lots of sense because on most part of the country there is no labor, there is no people available whatsoever.

[F]

So what's going on, aside from the school, what else is being built here at the moment?

[E]

Well, we have some private houses being built for private owners.

[B]

They produce 200 modules a year. Some houses are even delivered with fitted kitchens and the furniture already inside. Half their clients are foreigners. Amaro Santos says the market's growing fast.

[E]

This is a two bedroom house, for instance. It's a very small house with 56 square meters. It's made of three different modules. We can step inside if you want.

[F]

Yeah, Going up the steps into it, it's sort of all suspended like on stilts and then. Oh, wow. Yes, the sound, you can tell the difference immediately with the insulation that you've got in place here.

[C]

Yeah.

[F]

So this is the bare bones of

[B]

a two bedroom house.

[E]

Yes. Usually these houses are assembled in one day on site because we are always installing it on top of ground screws that we put on soil with no concrete whatsoever. So it's a very, very sustainable and very clever solution that we found.

[F]

How has Dula's journey reached this point? You were here from the beginning.

[E]

You know, this is a 53 year old company, but we have been in the market modular industry for around 25 years. So in the beginning we were like preaching in the desert. Nobody was listening to us. But I would say in the last 10 years it has been like a growing tide and we cannot stop it.

[F]

The problem with Portugal in some respects is that a lot of the wood that's grown is eucalyptus. It's for pulp, it's for pellets, for burning. It's a lower quality. Where does your wood come from?

[E]

Yeah, you're right. It's a shame we have to import wood, but we use mainly Finland as a provider. One of the main advantages besides the sustainability, I would say it's the certainty that we can provide to the customer. He's going to have a house delivered on budget, on time and with the quality that has been contracting with us, this is not possible. At least it's not easy to have that result with regular and traditional methods of construction, for sure.

[B]

But questions are being raised about the sustainability of wooden houses. What about the forests? Does it really reduce carbon emissions? What about the risk of fire? Sweden has always been the pioneer and is a good place to hear about lessons learned.

[D]

So I'm Sandra Frank and I'm one of the founding partners at Arvad developers in Sweden. And we only develop in wood or wooden buildings.

[B]

In 2013, the first residents moved into Strandparken, eight storey apartment blocks outside Stockholm. Arvad built everything above ground out of wood, including the lift shaft.

[D]

When we started to build these houses, we got strange phone calls from the biggest construction companies in the world. And up to till today, we've had more than 25,000 people from 150 different countries visiting Strandparken.

[B]

This groundbreaking building was also made possible by Cross Laminated Timber, or clt. But people started to ask, that's all very well, but what about the Swedish Forest that everyone loves?

[D]

I actually called the factory that was making the CLT and I said, I asked them, how much time does it take for the Swedish forest to grow 2,000 cubic meter of CLT, which this house contains? And they said 44 seconds. I realized that we didn't question using concrete or steel, which is also materials that you take from the nature, but it never grows back. It's an ending. It's both ending materials. So it's about 36% of the total global carbon dioxide emissions is from construction sites globally.

[F]

And flights is only two and a half to 3%. Yeah, but yet people have so much more focus on on that than on the small things.

[D]

If we can start using growing materials instead of ending materials, that would be a lovely thing. And also the forest. While a tree grows, it consumes carbon dioxide and it stores it in the tree. So if we can build our future cities out of this material, we actually store carbon for as long as these buildings are standing.

[F]

So is there a policy about planting, about replanting trees in Sweden as well? For every one you cut down, you have to replace, is that right?

[D]

Yeah. For each tree you take down, you have to plant a new one. This was actually a policy made 100 years ago. And today we have more than double the amount of forests than we had 100 years ago. And today we are planting about four trees for each tree that you take down. So the Swedish forest is actually growing a lot every every year.

[B]

Back in Portugal, in a muddy field, it was time to see Alex are flat packed wooden naked house stored under a tarpaulin.

[C]

This makeshift cover is keeping the wood dry and ventilated. Huh?

[F]

Underneath this cover, under here.

[C]

Oh, wow.

[F]

Okay, here it is. This is the wood you're talking about.

[C]

You can see the size of them. This is one piece of wood that's 13 meters long and 3 meters wide. Wow.

[F]

And this is your jigsaw puzzle that you have to put together.

[B]

This fire risk is something he's well aware of after a large wildfire in 2023 reached the edge of his land.

[C]

Ironically, you know, wood is much better behaved in a fire than, say, steel. You know, steel collapses suddenly at 500 Celsius, whereas engineered timber mass timber just chars and protects itself, just like these trees here. You know, the only trees after the fire are the cork trees because they're the oak. It's dense timber and the eucalyptus that caused the fire. They're all stripped away.

[B]

It's something he says mortgage companies and insurers are starting to understand. And while European countries with forests are at an advantage, and he thinks Portugal needs to look ahead and grow its own.

[C]

Well, that has to change. I mean, bringing the wood from Scandinavia, that's kind of absurd. So it's no longer about fast growing softwoods to be pulped or eucalyptus. It's more about decent pine species to make construction timber. I'm aware that we're in a really exciting period, I think to be an architect right now and an engineer right now and a builder right now is to be taking part and possibly helping in a revolution.

[B]

Bureaucracy can block progress, but regulation can also promote sustainability. And with the increased desire for abandoned land and a lack of workers, it's not surprising that Portugal is embracing the woodhouse revolution. Thanks for listening to Business Daily on the BBC World Service. This episode was presented and produced by me, Alistair Leathead. You can listen every weekday and wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

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