Two Launceston buildings – both framed in mass timber – have been crowned as two of Tasmania’s best buildings as part of the Tasmanian Architecture Awards last weekend. Awarded minutes apart, St Luke’s new seven-storey plyscraper (which now towers above all other office blocks in Launceston) and the University of Tasmania’s “The Shed” took home the Commercial Architecture and Interior Architecture prizes, with both also awarded Sustainable Architecture prizes.
Sarah Lindsay, chair of the jury for the 2025 Tasmanian Australian Institute of Architects Awards, said the winners each exemplify the best in Tasmanian architecture. “The projects for this year’s awards sparked rich and thought-provoking conversations, touching on themes such as sustainable forestry practices, trauma-informed design, education pedagogies and the urgent housing crisis,” she said. “The discussions reminded us of the profound role in shaping not just our built environment, but our collective future.”
Designed by TERROIR (St Luke’s) and Wardle (The Shed), both projects used timber-led solutions (Xlam and Cusp’s cross-laminated timber and Hess Timber’s glulam for St Luke’s and Australian Sustainable Hardwood’s MASSLAM for The Shed) to tackle sustainability.
For Scott Balmforth, director of TERRIOR, the decision to use timber (over concrete) not only accelerated construction time frames and tackled emissions but, importantly, also improved workers’ well-being: “St Luke’s were brilliant,” Balmforth said. “They saw it as an opportunity, they saw the benefits that it would give them – that mass timber gives you, just the sense of walking in,” he said. “The challenges of delivering a building like that, particularly in a regional place (like Launceston), were really rewarding.”
Meanwhile, for Wardle, the $97 million The Shed can almost be unbolted and recycled in many years to come: “The nature of the timber frames, the windows, the steel outer frames, the cladding, the sun protection devices, the roofing, the glazing systems, all can be unbolted and recurred when needed in many years time,” John Wardle said.
Speaking to the Examiner, Wardle and Balmforth said they were honoured to receive the awards and have been humbled by the community’s interaction with the buildings. Blamforth said he’s received praise from the building’s office workers and visitors: “It’s touching to go there on an early morning and see parents bringing their kids and playing in the play area, or having a coffee as people are coming and going to work for the day, seeing the life within the building.”
Whilst Wardle said he was looking forward to seeing how The Shed would affect the generations to come, with hopes that The Shed would invite people who had never considered going to university to visit the campus”
“Rufus Black stated, very profoundly, the importance of these buildings,” he said. “It’s quite symbolic as a building that it attracts people who generally may have never been to university, to come and enter through these very open and inviting entry portals and feel at home and harmonised.”
- To learn more about St Luke’s new building, which is faster, greener and safer than traditional steel-and-concrete construction, click here for Wood Central’s special feature from July 2024.
