News & Events

The winners of Australia’s peak international design awards – the highest honour for design and innovation in the country were announced on the 9 September 2020 during the 2020 Good Design Week. 

The Suspended Remnants - Timber Pavilion, which is a structure created from a collaboration between two ARC Future Timber Hub Projects, Alternative uses for under-valued sawmill products in innovative timber structures and Prefabrication and digital fabrication strategies for large-scale timber construction, received a prestigious Good Design Award Gold Accolade in the Engineering Design category in recognition for outstanding design and innovation.

The latest large-scale CLT compartment fire test for the Future Timber Hub Project “Exploring the self-extinguishment mechanism of engineered timber in full-scale compartment fires” has been showcased on the ARC Research Highlights.  There will be more large-scale compartment fire tests later this year!

On the 22 June 2020 a group of delegates from the ARC Future Timber Hub, which included delegates from The University of Queensland, Griffith University, Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF) and Hyne Timber were showcased the timber construction of the Monterey Apartments building site at Kangaroo Point, Brisbane, Australia.  Simon Betteridge and members of the team at the Gardner Vaughan Group hosted the tour which highlighted the key drives and learnings for this market leading project.  

The Future Timber Hub are appreciative of Hyne Timber and Lendlease, who are both Future Timber Hub interdisciplinary partners, being involved in the ‘Building Greener Cities’ episode by ABC Catalyst.

Please see news article from Timberbiz promoting our recent CLT fire test for the ARC Future Timber Hub project "Exploring the self-extinguishment mechanism of engineered timber in full-scale compartment fires".

The timber pavilion that was exhibited last year in Barcelona for the IASS ‘Advanced Manufacturing and Materials’ Competition was on display at the Melbourne School of Design’s Future Prototyping Exhibition as part of Melbourne Design Week 2020.

Chief Investigators of the Future Timber Hub, Kim Baber and Dr Joe Gattas presented during the week.  Kim Baber presented at a floor talk on the opening night and Dr Joe Gattas was on the panel at the Symposium on the 18th March.

The second stage of the char fall-off study fire test at the QFES' White's Island Live Fire Training facility was completed on the 26 February for the Hub Project “Exploring the self-extinguishment mechanism of engineered timber in full-scale compartment fires”. This is the fourth test in the experimental series of large-scale tests in the ARC Future Timber Hub. The aim of the test was to demonstrate the occurrence of CLT self-extinction for a limited fuel load.

Additional Articles

TimberBiz - 1 April 2020 - Determining self-extinguishment characteristics of CLT

On the grounds of The University of Queensland (UQ), near the Advanced Engineering Building, there is a Tiny House on display until the end of Feburary 2020.  This house was erected to demonstrate 3E panels which was invented from a collaborative research project on hybrid FRP-timber thin-walled structures between UQ, the Queensland State Government Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF), and Hong Kong Polytechnic University.   

Additional Articles

UQ's Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology News - Published 3 Feb 2020 - UQ’s Tiny House based on a big idea

On the 9 & 10 December 2019, the Future Timber Hub at The University of Queensland held a 2-day continuing professional development course on integrated design of timber buildings where an old friend from TRADAC days, Geoff Stringer presented on timber durability.   Other subjects were fire safety (expert Professor José Torero) and building physics (expert Samantha Anderson). The 16 year old Ferry Boardwalk OSA designed at UQ was used as part of the workshop exercise.