Sustainable production and management of an Industrialized House

The PRO.CRE.AR. Bicentenario (Argentine Bicentennial Single-Family Housing Credit Program) implemented between 2012 and 2015 approximately, included a model of wooden houses, thus enhancing in Argentina the opportunity to have a house built with industrialized wooden elements. The paper compares at a conceptual level the construction of the same house (similar to the prototype named “Maderera”) as a traditional building, i.e., with brick masonry and reinforced concrete, and instead with industrialized wood construction as funded by the PRO.CRE.AR program: the comparison focuses on the amount of CO2 incorporated in the two constructive solutions. Alongside this assessment, conducted on the basis of estimated quantities of materials and data found in the literature, the paper examines the amount of CO2 not produced over the lifetime of the house when photovoltaic elements and solar panels are possibly adopted for local energy production and then discusses the positive impact of any energy storage systems. The results regarding the building energy demand and the CO2 saved support the choice of building industrialization for the wood supply chain, propose additional options for the deployment of wood construction, and evaluate the impact of home PV and solar panels for sustainability and integration into the technological system.