Designing for Disassembly: Timber Construction’s Future Investment

The rise of timber towers is accelerating as the material’s many advantages continue to make inroads in Australian construction. Timber buildings offer advantages across a range of aspects: construction, leasing demand, asset sales and material reuse. And the fact that 62 per cent of a timber building’s weight is embodied carbon doesn’t hurt the push for green credentials one bit. Despite costing up to 10 per cent more to build, a timber building has the potential for a 20 per cent uplift. That’s particularly true for commercial buildings in the Sydney CBD. But there’s more real value to be unlocked. The adoption of cradle-to-cradle design means timber towers can be disassembled and relocated or stacked on to new podiums, slashing construction costs on new builds. Lendlease senior project manager Jeremy Tompson says most new technology was not financially viable ... until it is. He points to solar power and electric cars as examples. Timber as a modern building material is following suit. “We invested heavily in this technology, perhaps some would say foolishly, and that was before we built these [timber] buildings,” Tompson says. “I reckon timber buildings are somewhere between 5 and 10 per cent more expensive than concrete buildings as a gross value. ▲ Lendlease senior project manager Jeremy Tompson. &ldquo;If it&rsquo;s a $100-million job in concrete it&rsquo;s $110-million in timber ... in the worst case, it could be $105 million. --> “If I had a timber building to rent in Sydney CBD I’ll have 100 people wanting to move into it. If I had a concrete building I’d have 20 people wanting to move into it. “The tenants are looking at buildings like this ... because their carbon policies require them to do so.” Lendlease’s International House Sydney at the north-eastern gateway to Barangaroo, completed in 2017, was one of the first office buildings in Australia to be built entirely of engineered timber. Tompson says buildings of concrete proposed for the Barangaroo site were knocked back six times but the timber building won favour with the Sydney Harbour Foreshore Authority. After its success, Lendlease enlisted architects Tzannes again to start work on Daramu House next door. But, as Tzannes director Alec Tzannes outlines, the design and planning must go beyond the here and now. “You can no longer just design it to go up, you’ve got to design it to go down,” Tzannes says. “The onus is on the designer to produce a set of documents or design a building that is beautiful, and design it in such a way that it is prefabricated. “There were 66 shipping containers for International House, which had all the timber. It came off the boats and trucks and was craned in the order of construction. “Just like Lego, it is stored [and] packed ... and transported in reverse order and removed from the containers to be assembled onsite. “Therein lies the trick to disassembly, because absolutely everything is bolted together. You may not see that as we have clever ways of disguising it.” ▲ Alec Tzannes designed International House Sydney—completed in 2017—with Amy Douse and Tony Lam. The architect says that in the future, owners will not sell these properties as a demolition site, but rather as a vacant site and resell all of the building parts quite effectively. “So if you’re thinking in 20 or 100 years this is too small, Sydney needs a 20-storey building there, you go into the digital file to see the parts and reuse it,” Tzannes says. “I think you could put a whole building on top of another building, just as it is, or disassemble it, cut it into new shapes, bolt it together and erect it somewhere else.” While it takes more effort to design, the construction process is simpler, has less waste and requires fewer trades. “In the case of International House it was an extremely clean site, there were no wet trades and there was zero absenteeism as it was an extremely safe site and people were happy to go there,” Tzannes says. “Timber carries the aroma of the forest instead of giving off all the fine pollutants that smell like gyprock and concrete materials.” Tzannes’ next approved timber project is at 4-6 York Street for family-owned NGI Investment, creating a 13-storey commercial building with ground-floor retail and a rooftop terrace. ▲ A render of NGI Investments approved office development, which will be among Sydney’s tallest timber towers. Now, Lendlease is looking at a timber project that would create at least 15,000sq m space for a major government department. And the CIT Wooden Campus main building, a five-storey timber facility for the ACT Government and also a Lendlease project, is nearing completion. Tompson says that despite the potential, the adoption of timber buildings and the technology are slow going. “It’s really hard, three years away from starting a building to handing it over, to have those proper conversations and convince developers that the outcome we experienced is repeatable,” Tompson says. “But it has been repeatable from the three jobs I’ve done. “If you asked me 10 years ago if it would be the next generation of materials I would have said, undoubtedly, ‘"ook, it works’. “But it hasn’t had that take-up.” ▲ The structural parameters for the first timber buildings at Barangaroo were crafted on a 6m x 9m grid. While the experts say no one can fault it technically, convincing the industry is another matter. “It is very easy to be critical of a timber building, it’s like converting people from coalfire power stations to solar and wind turbines,” Tompson says. “They said you cannot run a country on wind and solar, you can’t even do 25 per cent of it. Well, today we are running almost 50 per cent. “It was not financially beneficial to buy the first solar panels but now it is ... it was not financially beneficial to buy the first Tesla but now it is.” Tompson says the industry was in a sweet spot where things could change. “We’re continuing to close the gap between concrete and timber as energy prices rise because concrete is very energy intensive, so the gap closes,” Tompson says. “As the commodity of the timber value falls, we close the gap as well.” Timber buildings could solve a number of common problems in the industry with fewer trades, more embodied carbon and added value. “With a new round of floods, droughts and bushfires, sustainability gets a kickstart,” Tompson says. “We get a new lease of energy coming in to say let’s drive carbon neutrality higher.”

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