Grange Development plans world's tallest hybrid timber skyscraper for Perth

In a move that may needle with the developers of the recently approved Atlassian’s hybrid timber tower in Sydney, Melbourne-based Grange Development has submitted plans to the City of South Perth to build an even taller one in Perth.

The property developer has announced its intention to build the world’s tallest hybrid timber tower, named C6, on Charles Street near Perth Zoo in South Perth, which is set to be 3 metres taller than its Sydney equivalent at 183m.

Estimated to cost $350 million, if approved, the multi-purpose building will be Western Australia’s first carbon-negative building and consist of commercial and communal spaces alongside residential apartments set over 48 levels.

“Timber as a building material has been around for centuries, but only recently has mass timber construction and fabrication methods made it a viable option en masse,” Grange Development founder and director James Dibble said.  

“C6 represents the future of what is possible, except we will deliver it now. On-site energy production, a complete electric vehicle solution that can totally remove the need for fossil fuel-powered cars, a huge focus on biophilic design to deliver tangible health benefits, and a building that actively sequesters carbon.

“If we get this right, we should never have to rely on building another solely concrete or steel tower in our lifetime.”

Designed by Melbourne-based architects Elenberg Fraser, the proposal includes provisions for 245 one, two, three and four-bedroom apartments, a 500sqm rooftop with an edible garden, dining, and entertainment space, and 1,650sqm of communal wellness amenities.

At ground level, C6 will include a 2,000sqm four-storey, split level, open-air piazza with a playground, cinema, horticultural zone and food and beverage entertainment precinct. This area is set to be gifted back to the Council and the community.

C6 will be Australia’s second carbon-negative building after the Atlassian tower, meaning it will remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere; however, only 42 per cent of the building will be comprised of timber – the rest consisting primarily of concrete and steel. Although provisionally slightly taller than the Atlassian tower, the site will roughly span about two-thirds of the area of the Dexus-led (ASX: DXS) Sydney development.

The building will be constructed using approximately 7,400 cubic metres of timber leveraging cross-laminated timber (CLT), glue-laminated timber (Glulam) and laminated veneer lumber (LVL). In comparison to a traditional concrete structure of a similar scale, it is forecast to save the equivalent energy of roughly 4,885 economy class seats on a Perth to London long-haul flight.

Named after the periodic table’s symbol for carbon, structural engineers working on the project have determined that it will take 59 minutes to regrow the entire building’s 7,400 cubic metres of timber in one sustainable forest region.

Dibble, who notes Australia is one of the highest emitters of carbon per capita globally, believes the building industry is one of the main culprits and is motivated to address the issue.

“We as a company are not driven solely by profit. We are driven by the need to urgently reduce our carbon footprint whilst delivering happier, heathier homes,” Dibble said.

“We want to encourage other developers to see what we have delivered with C6 and start to incorporate the methodology across other projects. Steel and concrete are some of the most energy-dense materials in the world to produce, and at the moment, the industry relies on it.

“If we can accelerate a paradigm shift into the use of more renewable building materials such as mass timber in a hybrid nature and see even 10, 15 or 20 per cent of future projects use mass timber in their construction in the next few years, we will have succeeded. At the moment, that figure is almost zero. If nothing changes, nothing changes.”

Centred around an ethos of five fundamental principles of community, climate, innovation, value and execution, Grange’s current portfolio includes 7,000 dwellings across land, medium-density and high-density, worth roughly $2.5billion. It recently partnered with Gurner on a project in Nedlands, Perth.