Brisbane Can Surpass the Best Olympic Games Ever — What it Needs

The Brisbane Olympics have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to leave a lasting legacy for Queensland…but it lies in better and smarter timber use, not just in new venues but just as importantly in the retrofitting of existing venues.

That is the key takeaway from experts who have taken inspiration from London, Tokyo, Paris, and Sydney. It comes as members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) executive today meet Andrew Liveris, Brisbane 2032 organising president and Cindy Hook, CEO, for the first round of in-person talks as preparations for the 2032 ramp-up.

The first in-country meeting since Brisbane was awarded the Games in 2021 they will give Liveris and Hook a chance to provide the IOC with in-depth updates on progress and for coordination commission members to ask questions. Incoming IOC president Kirsty Coventry, previously the coordination commission chair, is attending alongside outgoing president Thomas Bach. 

This afternoon, Wood Central spoke to Clarissa Brandt from Timber Queensland and Andrew Dunn of the Timber Development Association, who both toured venues used at the 2021 Tokyo Summer games: “We encourage sporting bodies to aspire to iconic buildings that reflect the identity and ambition of their sport—and timber offers a compelling path to achieve that,” Brandt said.

Pointing to the London Velodrome, Japan’s National Stadium – the first main stadium built using structural timber for decades – and the Paris Aquatic Centre, Brandt challenged organisers to use timber in Spring Hill’s demountable aquatic centre. “Timber buildings are ways to deliver iconic structures….the Paris Aquatic Centre was built from timber – so ours should be as well,” she said.

“The Brisbane Olympic Games represent our opportunity to surpass the legendary 2000 Sydney Olympics—widely regarded as the best ever,” said Dunn, a timber engineer involved in helping drive timber-rich venues at Sydney’s Olympic Park. “A key starting point in this journey is to embrace sustainability through more extensive use of timber structures than we saw in Sydney, showcasing both our environmental leadership and architectural innovation.”

And timber is not just for new builds either, “but it’s a smart solution for upgrading existing venues too,” Brandt said, pointing to renders of the $91 million redevelopment of Barlow Park in Cairns – covered by Wood Central – which features a new timber-framed grandstand. In effect, “this shows timber can transform legacy infrastructure into world-class, future-ready facilities,” Brandt said, especially in the regions.

In March, Wood Central spoke to Professor Keith Crews, the chairman of WCTE 2025, who said that cross-laminated timber and frame timber could be game changers in helping organisers repurpose infrastructure after games. “This creates a very interesting business model because we’re not building this for a six-month period but (instead) for a 50-year design lifecycle that flows back into the supply chain.”

“Let’s think about this as buildings that are going to be there for 50 years, not five years now; in the past, it’s often just been the stadiums that people think about, not the ancillary buildings or the support buildings, which, incidentally, would use significantly more amounts of timber than if we just built a stadium,” Crews said.

According to Crews, one major advantage of using timber over other materials is that it can easily be deconstructed, flat-packed, and used in regions post-games: “For example, small buildings—used as meeting rooms for the Olympics—could be turned into community centres or libraries after the games. All of these things are possible with cross-laminated timber and timber framing, but it requires clever design and design detailing.”

• To learn more about the Brisbane Olympics and the current stadium and infrastructure plan, click here for Wood Central’s special feature.