How a sustainability-led design approach helped Architectus deliver a multi-award-winning mass timber building for Barker College Maths Hub

Taking a holistic approach to sustainability during the Barker College Maths Hub project has brought tremendous recognition for the design team during awards season, says Senior Associate and Public Sector Sustainability Lead at Architectus, Sam Morris. 

Above: Sam Morris

The Maths Hubs has not only won the prestigious AIA NSW Milo Dunphy Award for Sustainable Architecture, but also the Editor's Choice Award at the 2024 Sustainability Awards, where Architectus’ broad-reaching approach to sustainable design was acknowledged by the judges.

An expert in mass timber construction, Morris has also led innovative projects such as the Macquarie University Ainsworth Building, which won at the 2021 Sustainability Awards.

What makes the Barker College Maths Hub such a sustainable building? 

According to Morris, Architectus’ sustainability framework that's based on the UN Sustainable Development Goals, helped shape the Maths Hub project. For instance, the site had several mature trees that needed to be protected to conserve the existing ecology. Therefore, the building was planned around these trees. The reciprocal benefits are not only for nature but also the architecture in terms of the passive shading from the trees as well as the green views for the classrooms on the upper levels of the building. Additionally, rainwater harvesting also helps irrigate the surrounding fields, he says. 

“In terms of materials, embodied carbon is a big focus of everything we do,” says Morris. Being a mass timber building, Barker College Maths Hub has sequestered a lot of carbon, which significantly offsets the operational energy. Since the building is predominantly naturally ventilated, energy usage is reduced while the photovoltaic panels on the roof help reduce reliance on the grid. 

The wellbeing of the building’s future occupants was also an important consideration, which influenced everything from the exposed timber structure and the use of organic materials to biophilic design principles. “That really covers all 360 degrees of what you might call a sustainability wheel. That's our approach to sustainability, and I think it's turned out to be successful,” observes Morris. 

The sustainability brief

According to Morris, while they had a brief to implement best practice sustainability, the client didn't prescribe or seek any third-party accreditation, which was quite liberating for the design team since it allowed them to focus on more impactful things such as lowering embodied energy rather than scoring sustainability points. 

The brief also evolved over time. Architectus won the design competition in 2019 and began work on the project in early 2020 when the world went into lockdown. Newer design considerations came into play based on emerging evidence about the importance of keeping indoor environments safe from the spread of viruses, especially in schools, with natural ventilation being one of the recommendations. 

“We were already designing a mixed mode building, but we were able to dial that up and create an envelope that was essentially breathable by using at least 25 percent more natural ventilation openings in the building facade than the NCC standard. That was a strategy to improve resilience for the school in the event of future pandemics,” informs Morris.

Why doesn’t Australia have more mass timber buildings? 

Morris observes that Australia has been slow on the uptake compared to European countries when it comes to mass timber buildings and sees it as “a bit of a will and a skill problem”. 

To be able to deliver a timber building that is cost competitive with traditional construction, Morris believes the design team should be able to understand the manufacturing constraints and transportation limitations of mass timber and leverage the opportunities to dematerialise by removing internal finishes and exposing the beautiful timber. These are things that a good design team knows how to leverage to bring the cost of a timber building down, and that’s how skill factors into the equation, he notes. 

As for the will, Morris says architects need to be able to tell their client why mass timber construction is such a compelling proposition, especially for commercial and educational buildings, and be able to articulate the benefits of mass timber in terms of improved concentration or increased productivity.

“I think we need to have the motivation as architects, and we need to transfer that onto the design team. Once we have the will and the skill, we're going to see way more mass timber buildings in the market.” 

It's all about experience too. “The more experience we have, the more timber buildings we're able to deliver to the market, the easier it will be to deliver more in the future.”

Lessons learned from Architectus’ mass timber education projects

“You need to have a unique selling point, and you need a minimum viable product,” says Morris to design teams thinking about using mass timber in their projects. Architectus has delivered three mass timber buildings for the education sector including the Macquarie University Incubator, the Macquarie University Ainsworth Building, and the latest, the Maths Hub.

Buildings often must endure a value management process; therefore, having a unique selling point as to why your building must be mass timber really helps from the start, he explains. 

For the Macquarie University Incubator, the need to use mass timber arose from the brief, which sought a building that could be disassembled. “Having mass timber construction modularised meant that the building could be packed down, moved to another part of the campus, or even relocated to a different part of the country. That was a unique selling point for timber,” he elaborates.

Using mass timber for the Ainsworth Building on the same campus at Macquarie University was for an entirely different reason, making for a different unique selling point. Since it was located right next to an active hospital environment, mass timber construction allowed the new building to be constructed less than five metres away without impacting hospital operations.

Given the sensitivity of the site, the entire hospital was set up with vibration sensors during the construction of the Ainsworth Building. The only time that the sensors were triggered was when the hospital was receiving routine deliveries at its loading dock, highlighting the low impact nature of mass timber construction.

“Once you have a unique selling point, and you know and your client knows that timber is the right fit for the design, then as the design team, you need to make the design the right fit for timber,” says Morris about the need to have a minimum viable product. 

“In timber design terms, this means you need to have a product with the right features, grids, member sizes, etc., to ensure that the cost is viable early in the design stage because you're going to come under cost pressure at some point,” he explains. By designing a minimum viable product within the specific constraints and limitations of timber in terms of transport, assembly and fabrication, the design/product becomes minimally viable. 

The aura of mass timber buildings – and the impact on student engagement and learning outcomes

“It's really rewarding to see the students walking through the space for the first time. We actually see them stopping to touch the timber, maybe hug a column, smell the beautiful aroma,” says Morris as he underlines the qualitative aspects that timber has the potential to deliver.

Mass timber buildings have a huge impact as the building methodology allows organic materials to be exposed in indoor environments. In a classroom, for instance, having natural daylight, fresh air, great acoustics and a connection to the natural world along with exposed timber structures and timber finishes on the walls all contribute to a beautiful, healthy indoor environment.

Anecdotal evidence suggests the students at the new Maths Hub are really enjoying the space while the staff has reported that the building performs well, and the students are more engaged.

“There is definitely, in my mind, a huge impact to improving student engagement from having a design that benefits from some of those biophilic qualities. We're really looking forward to doing some robust post-occupancy evaluation just to exactly quantify what's the impact on wellbeing,” Morris says.

Image: Supplied 

Photography credit: Brett Boardman

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