Days out from King Charles III’s first visit to Australia as reigning monarch, construction crews are busy working to finish the Prince’s Quarter – a partnership between Charles III’s King’s Trust and the NSW Government’s Land and Housing (LAHC) department.
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.
Designed by Johnson Pilton Walker and constructed by Kane Constructions and Bridge Housing, the project will use 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 early next year.
To celebrate the milestone, Xlam presented a commemorative plaque to the King’s Trust 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.”
The King will be in Sydney on Monday and Tuesday – where Charles’s passion for the environment and climate change will be marked with a tour of the National Botanic Gardens on Black Mountain and a meeting with scientists at the CSIRO researching the impact of bushfires and the resilience of the environment to bounce back from devastation.
More about the project
Inspired by the King’s Foundation and Dutchy of Cornwall projects, the development – in Cowper Street Glebe, will be the largest project undertaken by the Trust in Australia. It will see the construction of affordable, lightweight and sustainable accommodation “featuring green roofs, as well as extensive landscaping, accessible apartments and footpath upgrades.”
The project will provide accommodation for 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 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, whilst 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. In 2022, the company secured a 60% stake in Mayflower Enterprises, the parent company of Xlam and Hyne Timber.
