One of Brisbane’s ugly ducklings will get a major glow-up with the former site of the Queensland Public Trustee—at 450 Queen Street—now subject to a $300m retrofit that will see it become one of the country’s most eco-friendly “A-grade commercial assets.”
Announced yesterday, Buildcorp has been appointed the principal contractor for the 6-Star Greenstar “world’s best practice” works, which will see PGIM Real Estate—acting on behalf of the Asia Pacific Value Partners IV Fund—install Queensland’s largest vertical extensions inside the 1974-era concrete building.
Designed by Fender Katsalidis, the three-storey extension will use 1,500 square metres of cross-laminated timber, and will see floor plates in the building range from 700 and 1,200 square metres and a net lettable area of 17,500 square metres across the buildings total floors. Together with retaining the 24-storey building’s concrete bones, Wood Central understands the retrofit will maintain almost 70% (66%) of its embodied carbon compared to a traditional demolition and rebuild model.
“The previously outdated 450 Queen Street will be repositioned as an A-grade asset with premium level services and amenities, embedding exceptional sustainability,” said Andrew Neary, executive director of PGIM Real Estate Australia asset management. “In line with our global sustainability strategy, 450 Queen Street is targeting the highest available credentials, including a 6 Star Green Star rating and features one of Australia’s tallest cross-laminated timber extensions.”
“It sets a new benchmark for adaptive reuse in commercial development.”
Last week, Wood Central spoke to Gianluigi Traetta and Florian Hitthaler from Italian-based RubnerHolzbau Srl, who said that vertical extensions made from cross-laminated timber are the perfect solution for growing cities like Brisbane, where competition for accommodation and leasing is tightening across the CBD.
“Timber is perfect for these projects,” according to Traetta, who said Australia has a proud tradition of using mass timber to maximise floor area and retrofit old assets: “The most important advantage is its lightness. In most cases, we do not need to reinforce the foundations. Sometimes, we have to work in very constrained areas and be as quick as possible because you bring disruption to the people living there, and so on – so the fast-paced nature of construction is also a major advantage.”
According to Traetta and Hitthaler—who will travel from Brixen, Northern Italy, to Brisbane to attend this month’s World Conference on Timber Engineering—vertical extensions could be an ideal solution for Brisbane Games organisers, who are scrambling to find accommodation ahead of the 2032 Summer Olympics: “One of our most recent projects is a timber-based vertical extension to accommodation the overflow spectators for the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics next year.”
Please Note: Wood Central will have exclusive coverage of the World Conference on Timber Engineering, which will be held in Australia for the first time from June 22 to 26, 2025.
