King Charles III has joined Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and NSW Premier Chris Minns in touring the Prince’s Quarter – a new partnership between Charles III’s King’s Trust and the NSW Government’s Land and Housing (LAHC) department, now just months away from opening to residents.
The project, covered by Wood Central last year, will see 75 new apartments and terraces, largely constructed from cross-laminated timber and glulam, rise in the inner-city suburb of Glebe —in what is Sydney’s largest and most ambitious social housing project in decades.
King Charles—who has rallied for decades against cookie-cutter, high-carbon concrete jungles—is a strong supporter of traditional construction, including timber, in driving low-carbon communities to help solve climate change and promote better social inclusion.
Onsite, the King’s Trust Australia chair, the Hon. Julie Bishop, proudly showed the King around the site where he met three young Australians working on the massive build – including West Patten, an 18-year-old First Nations man born and raised in inner-city Sydney, John Suttie, a 17-year-old from country NSW with dreams to become an architect-builder and Sam Amey, 20, who is using the project to get “hands-on” experience as part of his carpentry apprenticeship.
“The exemplary terrace houses and apartments are eco-friendly and will provide safe and welcoming homes to those who need it most. The project is inspired by our historic woolstore buildings and Glebe’s iconic Victorian terraces.”
The Hon. Julie Bishop, the King’s Trust Australia Chair and former Australian minister for Foreign Affairs who spent the morning with the King, Prime Minister Albanese and Premier Minns.
The Prince’s Quarter is Australia’s most ambitious social project built out of timber.
Designed by Johnson Pilton Walker and constructed by Kane Constructions and Bridge Housing, the project is now using more than 2,500 cubic metres of cross-laminated timber and glue-laminated timber, all supplied by Xlam and Hyne Timber and fully certified under both the PEFC and Responsible Wood certification schemes – expected to open for residents next year.
To celebrate the milestone, Xlam presented commemorative plaques to the King’s Trust Australia, Homes NSW and Kane Construction:
“We presented the plaques engraved on our own glue-laminated timber to showcase the building’s carbon credentials. The 2,590 cubic metres of timber is sourced from locally grown plantation pine, harvested at approximately 30 years old. It is sequestering 1860 tonnes of carbon from the atmosphere, equivalent to 934 fewer cars on the road. But more impressively, the volume of timber (based on Australia’s plantation estate for structural timber and a 30-year harvest cycle) will grow back in approximately 7 hours.”
“We are very proud to have supplied our mass timber solutions to Homes NSW in collaboration with the Kings Trust Australia,” according to Tom Bruce-Jones, Chair of the Hyne Group, who provided a statement to Wood Central. “As a Group, we actively promote the environmental advantages of structural timber as a renewable, low-carbon resource material, and we are very grateful that our products were chosen by the NSW Government and Homes NSW to construct this building.”
“We are absolutely delighted to learn of his Majesty King Charles III, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and NSW Premier Chris Minns’ visit to this development as part of the King’s Australian schedule.”
Tom Bruce-Jones, Chair of the Hyne Group
Wood Central understands that the timber used on the project is entirely locally grown in local pine plantation estates, much of which the NSW Government owns. The pine trees were approximately 30 years old at the time of harvest, and based on this age class and the Australian pine plantation estate, the timber volume supplied for the project will be regrown in approximately 7 hours.
More about the project
Inspired by the King’s Foundation and Dutchy of Cornwall projects, the development – of Cowper Street Glebe will be the largest project undertaken by the Trust in Australia and one of the largest undertaken anywhere in the world built by the Trust. It will see the construction of affordable, lightweight and sustainable accommodation “featuring green roofs, as well as extensive landscaping, accessible apartments and footpath upgrades.”
Once built, the project will accommodate around 130 tenants in Sydney’s inner west. It will include “two eight-storey brick “wool store-style” apartments and five terrace houses inspired by the local Glebe vernacular. In a statement provided to Wood Central, Xlam Australia confirmed its engagement with the pre-tender design team “extended back over two years.”
“From the outset, it was clear that LAHC had a vision for sustainable development and local Australian procurement was key in achieving this vision,” Xlam Australia said. With the appointment of Kane Construction as the project’s head contractor, “the successful collaboration continued, with XLam heavily integrated into the project design team.”
Accordingly, this integrated approach” has yielded clear benefits from simplifying and streamlining panel thicknesses and layouts to removing the need for project-specific fire or acoustic testing,” Xlam Australia said, “often viewed as a barrier to entry for CLT projects.”
King Charles III is a long-time supporter of sustainable timber production
The Prince’s Trust—renamed the King’s Trust late last year—is a United Kingdom-based charity founded in 1976 by King Charles III to help vulnerable young people get their lives on track. It supports 11-to 30-year-olds who are unemployed or struggling at school and at risk of exclusion.
In 2013, the former Prince of Wales established Prince’s Charities Australia under the leadership of Tony Beddison AC and inaugural Chief Executive Janine Kirk AO. The current King is a long-time supporter of sustainable forestry, and the Prince of Wales appointed Geraint Richards Head Forester of the Duchy of Cornwall.
Last year, the King visited the James Jones and Sons sawmill in Aberdeenshire, Scotland. The processor sourced over 150,000 tonnes of certified timber from the Balmoral Estate’s 1200 hectares of productive forests.
The visit demonstrated the value of productive forestry, the circularity of forest products, the importance of tree planting to meet future housing demand, and the UK’s net-zero climate commitments.
In 2022, the company secured a 60% stake in Mayflower Enterprises, the parent company of Xlam and Hyne Timber.
