Who will specify engineered timber? Lessons from a national census of Türkiye's building curricula
Engineered timber reaches a building only through a designer able to specify it. This study asks whether Türkiye's architecture and civil engineering programmes produce such designers, using the national population of departments, a re-coding of 193 full catalogues for nine material families, and the retained text of 220 compulsory courses. No building-discipline programme requires a timber course, while every wood-specialist programme does. The comparator shows this is neither crowding nor a judgement about timber: reinforced concrete, steel and soil mechanics are compulsory almost everywhere, and every other material, precast concrete included, is compulsory nowhere. Civil engineering course text contains no timber construction technology at all. The binding accreditation criteria name no structural material for either discipline, yet name timber throughout the forest industry entry. The lever exists and has never been aimed at the specifiers. The instrument is transferable to any country with published curricula.
Authors
- Fazıl Akdağ (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3316-8104)
- Fatma Betül Künyeli (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6189-5966)
Institutions
- Erciyes University (TR)
Publication Details
- Journal
- International Wood Products Journal
- Published
- 2026-10-12
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1177/20426445261497015
- Primary Topic
- Engineering Education and Curriculum Development
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 0.00