“A derelict nightmare” was how locals described the former headquarters of the Canberra Police and Community Youth Club (PCYC) after it sat abandoned for nearly two decades.
The building in Canberra’s inner-city suburb of Turner had been damaged by a violent storm in 2006 which caused its roof to collapse. For years its walls were a canvas for graffiti and its rooms a haven for people sleeping rough.
When Canberra PCYC’s chief executive officer Cheryl O’Donnell first encountered the building, her reaction was “what a waste of space”. Nothing could be done to make the building habitable, she says.
It took years for a committed group of businesspeople and community champions to attract the financial and government support for a redevelopment to get off the ground.
But last year, a joint venture between PCYC, community housing provider CHC and local charity the Snow Foundation secured the ACT government’s backing.
A proposal for 45 affordable housing units has been submitted for development approval. This includes 35 units with below-market rent for essential workers, plus 10 social housing units for at risk young people aged 16 to 24. A social enterprise café will provide a revenue stream for the PCYC and work experience for disadvantaged youth.
Subject to planning approval, the building will be supported by the ACT government’s $60 million Affordable Housing Project Fund.
Comfortable and cheaper to operate
At the heart of the project is an innovative approach to affordable apartment design, featuring a cross-laminated (CLT) structure and high performing facade.
James Hetherington, technical director with DJAS Architecture, has been working pro bono on the project since 2017. James travelled to Canada to investigate the potential for sustainably sourced CLT as a long term solution to Australia’s housing affordability crisis.
CLT offers the basis for robust thermal envelope necessary for Canberra’s variable climate, James says. CLT reduces air leakage and thermal bridging because it simplifies the build-up of external walls with less need for structure, which in turn improves thermal performance and lowers energy costs. This means year-round comfort for building occupants.
“If we can deliver social housing that is more comfortable to live in and cheaper to run than housing constructed with traditional methods, then there’s no reason why CLT can’t be rolled out by private developers,” James notes.
Faster, safer and more sustainable construction
Australia’s building industry has known about the benefits of engineered timber for more than a decade now. Australia’s first CLT apartment building, Lendlease’s Forté in Melbourne, was completed in 2012. Manufactured in a factory, Forté was 30 per cent faster to build, safer to construct and produced less waste than a conventional structure.
CLT is a carbon sink thanks to trees absorbing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere as they grow. A lifecycle assessment of Forté, undertaken by RMIT, found it had an overall embodied carbon footprint 22 per cent lower than a conventional building. It was also 25 per cent more energy efficient than typical code compliant apartments.
Affordable and visually appealing
With labour costs continuing to rise, fewer residential projects are coming out of the ground as private developers fail to make the numbers stack up. CLT buildings routinely reduce construction time by a third, according to some estimates, which in turn translates into lower labour costs.
For affordable housing operators that own the asset, a slightly higher upfront cost for CLT will be offset by operational efficiencies. As building owners begin to think about their responsibility for the emissions generated in construction, as well as in operations, engineered timber emerges as an obvious solution.
We can see where the trendline is pointing. The number of timber buildings registered to achieve Green Star ratings has doubled in the past three years, according to the Green Building Council of Australia. The Clean Energy Finance Corporation has launched a $300 million program to encourage mass timber use across the property sector.
Cheryl O’Donnell says the PCYC proposal is for a “beautiful building” that “pays respect to the block which was the birthplace of the PCYC” and can be a source of pride for new residents. The timber design is “visually stunning” as well as efficient and affordable, she says. “Everyone who grows up in housing commission knows what a housing commission house is like. But this new building is classy.”
James Hetherington has been working meticulously on the design for several years and is excited to see it come to fruition. “When we started work on the design, our brief was to create an efficient, comfortable building that was sustainable and competitive in the market. Cross-laminated timber helps us tick all those boxes.”
