On November 20, 2025, Amsterdam signed the Timber Construction Pact (Houtbouw Pact MRA 2025-2030), cementing its commitment to innovating the construction industry. This landmark agreement represents the next phase of the city's timber—a bold vision to build at least 20% of new housing using timber and bio-based materials starting in 2025.
Amsterdam now embraces wood as the cornerstone of its climate-neutral future. This isn't just an ambitious target; it's a reimagining of how cities grow.
Housing Crisis Meets Climate Emergency
The challenge Amsterdam faces is staggering in its complexity. The Netherlands faces a housing shortage of over 331,000 homes, necessitating accelerated construction at a time when the building industry accounts for 44% of global CO2 emissions. Traditional construction methods won't solve this dual crisis—they'll only deepen it.
The Metropolitan Region of Amsterdam must build nearly 30,000 homes annually through 2030. In 2020, the region initiated the Green Deal Timber Construction (2021-2025), committing all 32 municipalities to achieve the 20% timber housing production target. The facts and figures in the covenant are scientifically substantiated by research from AMS Institute. Now, with the signing of the new Houtbouw Pact, the region is extending and intensifying this commitment through 2030, resulting in approximately 3,000 timber homes being built annually.
Why Timber? The Material That Grows Back
Timber offers something concrete and steel cannot: it's a renewable resource that actively sequesters carbon. HAUT, Amsterdam's tallest wooden residential building at 73 meters, demonstrates this. The 21-story tower used 2,800 cubic meters of PEFC-certified timber, storing 1,800 tonnes of CO2 and reducing its carbon footprint by 50% compared to conventional construction. Even more remarkably, the amount of wood used grows back in less than two hours in sustainably managed Austrian forests.
Modern mass timber products—particularly Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT) and glue-laminated timber (glulam)—have transformed wood from a traditional building material into a high-performance structural system capable of supporting high-rise construction. These engineered products combine the warmth and sustainability of natural wood with the strength and fire resistance required for contemporary urban buildings.
The BIMZEC Vision
The BIMZEC project, initiated by AMS Institute and developed in close collaboration with the University of TU Delft, Hogeschool Amsterdam, and municipalities, provides the scientific foundation for realizing Amsterdam's timber ambitions. The initiative focuses on industrialized, modular, and low-emission high-rise buildings, researching different aspects of sustainable construction to translate findings into tendering rules for the Netherlands’ G4 cities: Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, and Utrecht.
The project addresses a critical reality: circular economy practices that keep materials in the loop create more local transport, potentially increasing air pollution, noise, and congestion. BIMZEC tackles this paradox head-on, developing systems where sustainability and urban livability advance together rather than in opposition.
The project's philosophy is pragmatic. It combines industrialized and modular construction methods with efficient, sustainable logistics and low-emission materials. In 2023, fourteen different parties collaborated on seven studies examining various aspects, from air quality impacts to material logistics, resulting in "Hoog Hout haalbaar" (High Timber Feasible). These findings provided a knowledge base that has been used in Amsterdam’s tender criteria for sustainable construction, as well as national initiatives such as "The New Normal"—standardized requirements for sustainable and circular construction at the national level—initiatives that reshape how the Netherlands builds its cities.
From Medieval Ban to Modern Pioneer
Amsterdam's relationship with wood comes full circle. The city, famous for its brick buildings, originally used wood as its primary construction material until devastating fires in 1421 and 1452 led to an outright ban on timber construction in 1669. Now, nearly 350 years later, advanced engineering and fire safety technologies have made timber not just safe, but superior for sustainable urban development.
Richard Ruijtenbeek, Senior Advisor Circular Development for the City of Amsterdam, framed the urgency at the start of the BIMZEC project plainly: "The rising cost for traditional estate construction and serious climate change will stop new developments soon. We need a radically different approach with new standards, Circular/CO2 embodied materials, and industrialized construction and logistics."[
Taking Advantage of the Combination
What makes Amsterdam's timber ambitions achievable? The combination of modular design, industrial production, prefab, efficient logistics, on-site assembly, and digital integration through Building Information Modeling (BIM). Brought together, they result in accelerated, faster construction of high-rise buildings.
Unlike traditional construction, where changes can happen on-site, timber buildings require extensive coordination before a single panel arrives at the construction site.
Complete wooden structural frameworks are completed in under 70 days after the first prefabricated components arrive on site. This represents not just time savings but fundamental efficiency—more design time upfront translates to dramatically reduced construction time and waste.
Every hole for electrical conduit, every connection point, every window opening can be designed, tested, and manufactured before assembly begins. The result is a construction that's faster, cleaner, and more precise than traditional methods.
The New Timber Pact: 2025-2030
The Houtbouw Pact MRA 2025-2030, being signed on November 20, represents the next evolution of Amsterdam's timber commitment. The comprehensive approach addresses five critical work streams:
- Location identification: Designating suitable sites for timber construction
- Knowledge development and sharing: Building expertise across all skill levels
- Business case optimization: Making timber economically competitive
- Regulations and standards: Adapting building codes to enable timber innovation
- Communication strategy: Building public understanding and support
A dedicated Convenant Houtbouw MRA website serves as the hub for this ecosystem, featuring a knowledge bank, an interactive location monitor mapping timber projects across the region, and direct access to the program team.
Intelligent innovation
As Amsterdam aims to achieve climate neutrality by 2050, the construction industry must transform from being responsible for nearly half of global emissions to becoming a carbon sink. Timber construction, enabled by industrialized processes like those pioneered in BIMZEC and digital coordination through BIM, offers a pathway to that.
The question isn't whether Amsterdam can achieve its timber construction goals—pioneering projects across the city prove the technical feasibility. The question is whether the rest of the world can move quickly enough to follow Amsterdam's lead, transforming the construction industry from a climate liability to a climate solution.
As medieval Amsterdam learned after its great fires, sometimes the boldest path forward requires reimagining what was once forbidden. Today's timber revolution demonstrates that what makes cities resilient isn't avoiding risk—it's embracing intelligent innovation.
For more information about Amsterdam's timber construction initiative, visit bimzec.nl, the Convenant Houtbouw MRA website, or the AMS Institute's BIMZEC project page.
