The recent television coverage of the tsunami-battered coast of Japan emphasised the horror and scale of the destruction with whole landscapes flattened.

One striking aspect of the scene was the amount of timber and shattered wood covering all those areas left by the receding water, and this was a reminder that many homes in Japan are built with timber.

In this country, we seem to be more comfortable with bricks and concrete, and, apart from the odd Tudor national treasure, there are few houses made mainly of wood, though they are common in many parts of the world and clearly survive in a variety of climates.

Perhaps we don’t have the right conditions, such as extensive forests to supply the raw material, or sufficient space to allow most suburban buildings to be low and spread out.

Timber-frame and wood-plank houses are much more common in North America, where they are the norm outside the large cities, and the same is true of Scandinavia, with Sweden and Finland having most with their brightly-painted colours making a real impact on the landscape. Even when the houses appear to be brick-built, it is probably only a cladding on a timber frame and cavity walls are unknown.

There is now a strong argument for introducing the designs and materials of such houses into this country and there is evidence that they are becoming more common.

Wood has many advantages over brick and concrete – the obvious one is that replacement trees ensure a continuous supply, whereas bricks and concrete involve the extensive mining of clay and limestone, scarring the landscape, and their manufacture requires temperatures of more than 1,000 deg C, so producing excessive carbon dioxide. Every tonne of cement is responsible for one tonne of CO2.

It’s almost the opposite for wood, as not only does it lock away the CO2 used to make the tree for many decades – a natural form of carbon storage, so taking it out of the atmosphere – but the off-cuts from the timber preparation can be used for heating or bio-fuels, again reducing the carbon dioxide from fossil fuels.

Modern ‘kit’ houses are manufactured under factory conditions and delivered almost as flatpacks to be erected in just a few days on prepared foundations.

They are designed to fit together tightly and can include the highest levels of insulation, triple-glazed windows and renewable energy systems – they are clearly superior in terms of energy use to those houses built on site from bricks.

The warmest house I have lived in was a kit house in Shetland, and they are also an effective way of reducing the housing shortage.