Timber ticks all the boxes
Lightweight, durable and fast to construct, timber has the potential to tackle housing affordability and change the way we build medium rise apartments in our suburbs, says Robert Pradolin.
The former general manager at Frasers Property Australia, Pradolin was the registered builder on Australia’s first five-storey timber residential apartment building, The Green in Melbourne’s Parkville, which was built using materials and labour that are traditionally used in building houses.
The 57-unit, 5100 sqm building features a range of prefabricated timber components including an innovative timber floor cassette system that was developed to address safety concerns around working at heights.
The cassette system allowed the floors to be lifted into place with “millimetre perfection”, Pradolin explains, and within 24 hours, workers could start installing services on the floor below.
“There’s a real time advantage when compared to the traditional approach of pouring a concrete slab and requiring it to cure – the electricians and plumbers can be working on the floor below the day after the cassette floor is installed.”
Pradolin says the team chose timber because “it made economic sense”.
Having worked in the residential and commercial construction sectors for many years, Pradolin is now working with the housing industry to accelerate the uptake of timber in mid-rise construction.
A timber building can be significantly cheaper, and Pradolin thinks this could be part of the solution to more medium-density housing being economically viable in Australia’s middle and outer suburbs – areas where concrete construction is cost prohibitive.
“Timber presents an opportunity for domestic trades to upskill themselves to build medium rise timber apartments safely, efficiently and more affordably for the average Australian.”
Timber construction has sustainability benefits too. Not only is it a renewable resource, analysis undertaken by RMIT has found that using the timber system developed at Parkville reduced materials-related climate change impacts by 22 per cent, when compared with a standard concrete building. This effectively makes The Green a ‘carbon sink’.
“Timber ticks a lot of boxes. I think it’s a building material that could be the catalyst to a building revolution in the suburbs,” Pradolin concludes.
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