Wood products have been used in construction for over 10,000 years. Industry pinch points and sustainability goals have driven increased interest in material innovation via wood products. A newer wood product that is being discussed more and designed into more projects is CLT structural members. In the right situation they provide good strength to weight ratios while being relatively environmentally friendly.
A less discussed wood product that could potentially improve and revolutionize other materials is oil. While still being tested and only usable at a small scale, "wood refineries" may produce oil and oil products similar to those found at traditional oil processing facilities. In addition to oils, there are physical properties of wood that can be exploited and used at nanoscale to improve other building products. In this article lignins, which are a wood polymers, are being studied for use in windows. It is anticipated that once the lignins and the process are dialed in that use in windows will make them shatterproof and useful as structural members. The chemisty gets pretty far out there and pretty fast, for a construction guy like me, so once I see one in use I'll believe it but still won't understand how it works.
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