Apartment project at Kent Town is set to become an innovative first for cross laminated timber

A $27.3 million apartment project at Kent Town will become the state’s first to use an innovative timber construction technique.

A $27.3 MILLION apartment project at Kent Town will become the state’s first to use an innovative timber construction technique after being approved by the Development Assessment Commission.

All load bearing walls, floors and ceilings within the five-storey structure will use cross laminated timber (CLT) in place of traditional concrete and steel - halving the construction time and saving significant costs.

Local SA developer FA Mamac and building company Morgan and Hansen will deliver “Verde”, comprising 54 apartments, seven home offices, ground floor retail and commercial offices.

Morgan and Hansen managing director Andrew Morgan said the development would feature a central piazza for residents.

“We’d been looking for a site on the eastern side of the city for around two years and we saw it as an opportunity to develop something fairly unique in Adelaide,” he said.

“You’ve got the high rise stuff in the city and a fair bit of two-level development but no mid level.”

“It was crucial for us to be in the recently rezoned Kent Town precinct in line with the State Government’s 30-year plan.”

“It’s quite a sleepy area but we expect that it will be developed reasonably rapidly in the next five to ten years.”

CLT has been widely used across Europe for more than a decade but has been slow to be adopted in Australia.

There are just two completed CLT buildings in the country, including Lend Lease’s “Forte” in Melbourne which is the world’s tallest CLT apartment building.

The technique uses planks of wood that are laminated at 90 degree angles, creating dense and dimensionally stable panels that don’t shrink or swell over time.

CLT is around 25 per cent of the weight of traditional steel and concrete but is exceptionally strong and by prefabricating the panels before assembly on-site, construction times can be halved and noise on site reduced.

Steffen Lehmann, who spent four years as Professor of Sustainable Design at UniSA, has been a long-time proponent of CLT use in Australia and said it could offer critical support to the local timber industry.

He was planning a prototype CLT demonstration project at West Beach before moving to Perth earlier this year to head Curtin University’s School of Built Environment.

“We’ve been too slow, too risk averse - we’ve only managed to have two buildings in Melbourne but this can be a transforming industry - a new way to do things,” he said.

“If we do this right we could even have positive carbon buildings - cities could become carbon sinks where buildings store carbon. The technology's there but we need to be more innovative and daring.”

Mr Morgan has secured an Austrian supplier, with a 12 month construction period expected to kick off early next year.

Mr Lehmann is currently testing a hybrid of CLT and steel for use in large-scale commercial buildings and will publish his latest book, Wood in the City next year.

Adelaide-based architecture firm Proske designed the Verde apartments which will be priced from $330,000 to $525,000.