The Forest, the University of Tasmania campus in Hobart that Woods Bagot assembled largely from buildings and timber already on the site, is a finalist in both the Public Building and Sustainability categories at the 27th Australian Timber Design Awards, to be decided in Sydney on 21 October.
Eight days later it contests Educational Architecture and Sustainable Architecture at the National Architecture Awards in Brisbane, and from 18 to 20 November it is shortlisted in Higher Education and Research at the World Architecture Festival in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, the category Murdoch University’s Boola Katitjin won in 2023 within a month of winning two timber design awards.
Completed in November 2025 and built by Hansen Yuncken, the project retained 60 per cent of the existing structures on site, and a lifecycle assessment by its ESD specialists found a 40 per cent reduction in upfront carbon against a reference scenario. The brief, according to the submission, was for a campus and not a building.
New structure takes the form of a mass timber framed roof in Tasmanian Oak, with glue-laminated columns sitting on existing concrete slabs and glue-laminated beams on steel purlins spanning the teaching and study spaces, where the timber is left exposed. Timber accounts for 46 per cent of the new structure. A mass timber waffle ceiling brings daylight into the deep floorplate, with timber fins for shading. Floors are solid Tasmanian Oak, wall linings are Tasmanian Oak veneer on locally sourced plywood that doubles as acoustic partition lining, and the exterior is clad in IronAsh, an H3 treated Tasmanian Oak from Australian Sustainable Hardwoods.
Some of the timber is on its third life. First installed in the Crisp and Gunn warehouse fit out in the early 20th century, it was reused in the 1990s in the ceiling trusses, beams and winter garden bridge of the Forestry Tasmania building, and it now lines the walls of the new campus. The salvaged stock includes Oregon and Redwood imported from the United States in the early 1900s, while new timber was sourced from Tasmania.
The building is also designed for disassembly, avoiding adhesives in favour of interlocking and mechanical connections, so that the freestanding hempcrete pods, Durra Panel partitions fixed to the underside of the beams and much of the joinery can be removed, reconfigured or relocated. The Forest holds Australia’s largest commercial application of hempcrete.
Kyle Low, the Timber Development Association structural engineer organising this year’s awards, told Wood Central that telling a project’s timber story is what the awards always set out to do. “What we always try and do is tell the story of timber in the many projects that it finds itself in, the story of where it was grown, who made it, why it was chosen, and of course what the timber does in the buildings for the people who work, live and play around them.”
The Forest is one of three finalists also shortlisted for the World Architecture Festival, alongside the Sydney Fish Market and the Adelaide Aquatic Centre. Winners of the 2026 Australian Timber Design Awards will be announced at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney on Wednesday 21 October.
