A 350-cubic-metre glulam diagrid, lifted from a European production line to St Kilda Road, now crowns Anzac Station, the only platform-to-platform train-tram interchange on Melbourne’s Metro Tunnel, and an underground station forecast to move 14,500 passengers during peak. That is according to Tyson Infanti, Director of Business Development Australia and New Zealand within HASSLACHER group, who confirmed the German specialist, HESS TIMBER (a member of HASSLACHER group), supplied the entire curved-glulam, cross-laminated timber and structural connection package for the 84-metre canopy HASSELL has called a first for Melbourne and possibly Australia: a major rail station with its main entry on the tram platform.
HESS TIMBER, the Kleinheubach-based specialist timber construction company, supplied more than 350 cubic metres of curved and straight glulam beams alongside structural CLT soffit panels and the structural connection systems holding the diagrid above one of Melbourne’s busiest road and tram corridors. “We are pleased to have been able to work with CYP Design and Construction on this project,” HESS TIMBER said in its project release, with the diagrid designed by HASSELL, Weston Williamson + Partners and Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners, structural engineering led by HESS TIMBER and Arup, and construction delivered by Cross Yarra Partnership for the Victorian Infrastructure Delivery Authority.
The 84-metre by 20-metre canopy, parametrically modelled in software package Rhinoceros, is built from 13 glulam cross beams, weighing up to 4,500 kilograms each. 164 diagonal glulam sections form the intersecting framework that gives the canopy its silhouette and 190 uniquely shaped CLT panels, produced at the group’s site at Stall im Mölltal, Austria (NORITEC Holzindustrie GmbH), lining the underside, with 12 skylights set along the central spine and the longest curved beams shipped as 20-metre segments.
Wood Central understands that the diagrid geometry replaces conventional repetitive framing with a structurally efficient form that doubles as the station’s defining architectural gesture, allowing the timber roof to sit clear of the underground concourse on circular steel columns rising from within the station box itself. The hybrid arrangement uses steel for the supporting columns, main spine beams and perimeter ring beam, with mass timber for the lightweight, low-carbon roof, and the exposed timber panels softening what would otherwise read as conventional engineered transport infrastructure.
A long road from Kleinheubach to St Kilda Road.
The HASSLACHER group’s European production base supplies some of Australia’s largest glulam timber sections. These massive beams are milled full-length at Kleinheubach, Germany (HASSLACHER Holzbauteile GmbH), or Hermagor, Austria (HASSLACHER Holzbausysteme GmbH), and shipped via special break-bulk cargo ships, known as RoRo vessels, before being delivered to the site on piloted truck transports. The Anzac Station’s timber canopy with curved glulam rafters, utilising this production and transportation capability, was craned over St Kilda Road from 2022 onwards and now rests on twelve green steel columns rising up to 16 metres above the underground concourse.
Anzac Station opened to passengers on 30 November 2025 alongside the wider Metro Tunnel, with more than 70,000 people moving through the network on opening day and around 13,000 passing through Anzac before full timetabled services launched on 1 February 2026 under the Big Switch branding. The station serves the Royal Botanic Gardens, the St Kilda Road office precinct and Melbourne Grammar School, with the Shrine of Remembrance directly opposite the canopy entrance, shaping the biophilic design behind the exposed timber soffit and 12-skylight central spine.
It comes as Wood Central reported that the Anzac Station canopy joins HESS TIMBER’s deepening Australian project pipeline, with the Adelaide Aquatic Centre carrying Australia’s largest timber beams by weight and volume, Boola Katitjin at Murdoch University running on more than 1,800 pieces of glulam and Tasmania’s tallest mass timber building at St Luke’s in Launceston all flowing from the same European production lines of the HASSLACHER group.
Anzac Station is the first Melbourne rail station built with a direct platform-to-platform interchange between trains and trams, easing pressure on what Public Transport Victoria has identified as the busiest tram corridor in the world, with HESS TIMBER’s 350 cubic metres of glulam and CLT now carrying the architectural identity of an underground station forecast to serve 14,500 commuters every peak.
