Winning two awards at the annual World Architecture Festival (WAF) the largest live awards event for architects and designers globally, Woods Bagot architects for the UTAS Forestry Building received the WAFX Award for Building Technology as well as the Future Project: Education award in Singapore in 2024 for their demonstration of industry-leading design solutions in response to current social and environmental issues.
Focussed on a combination of adaptive reuse and on carbon storage (through the use of Australian manufactured and grown hempcrete materials), the design team were able to keep 60% of what already existed onsite. “Dematerialisation, longevity, adaptability, flexibility and disassembly were major factors that informed our process,” says Mendes. “It’s not just about the upfront carbon; we need to consider the embodied carbon, the operational emissions, tracking output from first day of construction through to its eventual removal at end of life.”
Innovative use of non-traditional building materials including hempcrete, contributed to exceeding the project’s sustainability targets. The laminated timber-framed dome, heritage façade and existing structure have all been retained. Targeting 40 percent less embodied carbon than comparable buildings, the project team adopted a comprehensively circular strategy to building materials.
For the fourth year running, the University of Tasmania has been rated as the number one university in the world on climate action in the Times Higher Education (THE) Impact rankings. The cutting edge transformation of their inner city campus has contributed to UTAS maintaining this lead position and their plan is to keep improving.