On 13 October, the engineers and architects behind three of the Nordic region’s best-known timber buildings will present them to a Portuguese audience at the Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC) in Lisbon. Wood Giants, the first edition of a congress on large-scale timber construction organised by the Portuguese timber engineering and construction company CarmoForm, closed its six-name international panel on 23 September, and half of it is Nordic-built.
Rune Abrahamsen, whom the organisers describe as responsible for the timber structures of Mjøstårnet, will present the 18-storey tower at Brumunddal on Lake Mjøsa. Completed in March 2019 with a load-bearing glued-laminated structure installed by Moelven Limtre and designed by Voll Arkitekter, the 85.4-metre building held the Guinness title of the world’s tallest wooden building until Milwaukee’s Ascent overtook it in August 2022. Florian Kosche, lead design engineer of Sara Kulturhus, will present Skellefteå’s 20-storey cultural centre and hotel, designed by White Arkitekter, built in cross-laminated timber and glulam for Skellefteå municipality at a cost of around SEK 1 billion, and opened on 8 September 2021. And Vanda Oliveira, a Lisbon-born architect who is Lead Design Architect at Copenhagen’s Henning Larsen, will present World of Volvo, the timber-structured experience centre in Gothenburg that Volvo Cars and Volvo Group opened in April 2024.
The rest of the panel
The three Nordic case studies are joined by Andrew Waugh, founding director of London’s Waugh Thistleton Architects, presenting the Black & White Building; Bernhard Egert, head of timber construction and green building at Vienna’s UBM Development, presenting LeopoldQuartier; and Pablo van der Lugt, the Dutch engineer and researcher on bio-based construction, who will give the panel’s broader view on circularity and materials. The Lisbon session is followed by a second on 29 October at the IETcc-CSIC Instituto Eduardo Torroja in Madrid.
“Wood Giants was born with a very clear ambition: to bring to Portugal and Spain the people who are really transforming construction worldwide,” CarmoForm chief executive João Figueiredo said in the company’s announcement, reported by ECO and by AICEP. “We do not just want to show large timber buildings; we want to create a space where architects, engineers, developers, investors and the whole chain can learn directly from those who have already proved it is possible to build taller, faster and more sustainably.” The stated audience is architects, engineers, designers, developers, investors, contractors and public decision-makers.
Why the Nordic examples travel
The speakers also represent the Nordic industrial chain behind these buildings. Moelven, the Norwegian group whose Limtre unit built Mjøstårnet, is one of the region’s largest glulam producers; Skellefteå municipality is also home to Martinsons, the Holmen-owned cross-laminated timber and glulam maker. For projects of this scale, engineered-timber components are typically sourced from the large Nordic and Central European mills, which is why a congress that puts their engineers in front of Portuguese developers is, in practice, also a supplier introduction.
The speakers also represent the Nordic industrial chain that Portugal would import from if it scales up. Moelven, the Norwegian-Swedish group whose Limtre unit built Mjøstårnet, is one of the region’s largest glulam producers; Sweden’s Skellefteå is home to Martinsons, the Holmen-owned CLT and glulam maker whose home town is the venue of the building Kosche engineered. Portugal produces maritime pine and eucalyptus but has no domestic cross-laminated timber capacity at Nordic scale, so the structural panels for the kind of projects Wood Giants will discuss are, today, an import — and the Nordic and Central European mills are the suppliers.
Why this matters for the corridor
Timber engineering is a small but expanding line in the Nordic–Portuguese trade relationship, and this congress is the first time the people who delivered its flagship buildings will pitch their methods to Portuguese decision-makers in one room. For Nordic engineers, panel producers and prefabrication firms, the interesting audience on 13 October is not the architects — it is the developers, contractors and public bodies in the room who will decide whether Portugal’s next housing, hotel and civic projects are specified in timber. NorthSouth HQ will follow the Lisbon session and any Portuguese projects that emerge from it.
Sources: ECO (23 September 2026), SAPO/Construir (23 September 2026), AICEP Portugal Global (24 September 2026), Wikipedia entries for Mjøstårnet, Sara Kulturhus and World of Volvo (consulted 27 September 2026).