Forest & Wood Products Australia (FWPA) has a new home after Australia’s Rural Research and Development Corporation (RDC) focused on forest and wood products moved into T3 Collingwood – the first mass timber building funded under the Australian government’s $300m Clean Energy Finance Corporation’s Timber Building Programme.
According to Andrew Leighton, FWPA’s CEO, the move “marks an exciting transition for our organisation, aligning with our commitment to support wood products, sustainability and innovation.”
T3 Collingwood, which achieved practical completion in October last year, is Hines Global Real Estate’s first mass timber project delivered in the Australian marketplace – with the US $94.6 billion asset manager now eyeing mass timber builds in Sydney and Brisbane.
Last year, David Warneford, the CEO of Hines’ Australia and New Zealand operation, said Australia is primed for a boom in “green” magnet buildings. Furthermore, these magnet buildings “are sustainability-driven, well-located, technologically efficient, and adjacent to transit.”
Developed by Jackson Clements Burrows, T3 Collingwood used more than 2,358 cubic meters of cross-laminated timber (CLT) from XLam Australia and an additional 874 cubic meters of glue-laminated timber (or glulam) from Australian Sustainable Hardwoods (or ASH).
The 15-storey building is made from a hybrid of materials, encompassing mass timber in the two basement levels, five concrete podium levels, and ten levels of exposed glulam post-and-beam structure with CLT panels.
“T3 Collingwood is a ground-breaking, sustainable evolution of old-fashioned office buildings,” according to Hines Asia Pacific CEO Ray Lawler, who added that the asset is now part of Hines’s 27 Timber, Transit, Technology (T3) global portfolio – which replaces traditional structural systems with prefabricated solid wood systems.
Why Hines T3 portfolio is a game changer for greener buildings
Hines, which has more than 200 projects under construction worldwide, has developed, redeveloped, or acquired 1,639 properties and is using mass timber construction systems to drive net-zero operational carbon across its building portfolio by 2040.
In March, as part of the International Mass Timber Conference in Portland, Wood Central reported that Jonathan Pearce, Head of Investments, Office, and Life Sciences at Ivanhoé Cambridge, said T3 is part of a pivot by investors away from larger, risker steel-and-concrete buildings.
According to Mr Pearce, who has worked with Hines for over 20 years on funding projects, the pivot allows asset managers far greater flexibility in turning around buildings quickly whilst avoiding dangerous 10-15-year project timeframes.
“From a risk management perspective, this just makes sense,” Mr Pearce said, “traditionally we would build multi-billion dollar steel projects. The problem with these projects is that we could start a project in 2012, put a shovel in 2017, finish the first stage in 2020, and start the second building that will be finished in 2025.”
“So what does that mean? It can take 15 years to finish a project,” Mr Pearce said before saying that mass timber buildings allow asset managers to play in “smaller and illiquid markets because the cheque size is so much smaller…allowing us to turn these buildings around quicker.”
Introducing FWPA’s new home – from today!
Yesterday, the FWPA made the big move and vacated its 16-year premises on Queen Street, in the centre of Melbourne, for level 6 of the new T3 Collingwood. In addition, Wood Central understands that the phone number remains unchanged: 03 9927 3200.
- To find out more about T3 Collingwood, please click on Wood Central’s special feature from last year.