Perth set for world first hybrid timber tower with 245 apartments

The Perth skyline is set to welcome one of the world's most unique towers to date.

Developer Grange Development has this week submitted plans to City of South Perth for what is set to be the world’s tallest, $350million hybrid timber tower, and Western Australia’s first carbon negative building.

If approved, the 183m high residential building, at 6 Charles Street, South Perth – aptly titled C6 after the periodic table’s symbol for Carbon - will become one of Australia’s most ambitious carbon negative buildings, with only the Atlassian hybrid timber Tower in Sydney currently on target for a similar carbon negative status.

Designed by Fraser & Partners - a research-based design studio that has emerged from Elenberg Fraser and created in response to the demands of our times and viewed through the lens of the climate crisis - C6 will be constructed using approximately 7,400m3 of timber leveraging Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT), Glue Laminated Timber (Glulam) and Laminated Veneer Lumber (LVL).

The proposal currently includes provisions for 245 one, two, three and four-bedroom apartments set over 48 levels, a 500 sqm rooftop with an edible garden, dining and entertainment space, and 1650 sqm of communal wellness amenity.

At ground level, C6 will include a 2000sqm+ four-storey, split level, open-air piazza with a playground, cinema, horticultural zone, F&B and entertainment precinct, equivalent in size to over 85% of the site, gifted back to Council and the community.

The public realm has been envisaged as a part paddock-to-plate urban farm and part immersive education hub in a visual and auditory experience.

Biophilic design is at the heart of C6, with almost 3,500 sqm of floral, edible, and native gardens. The building seeks to demonstrate that living in a building connected to nature provides tangible health benefits for its occupants.

In total, C6 will offer 18 sqm of communal space per apartment, which is 300 percent more than the current planning requirements of 6 sqm per apartment.

Through its extensive research and best practice benchmarking, Grange Development believes that hybrid timber buildings are the future of a carbon conscious construction industry, and if executed correctly, can transform the foundations of our built environments.

Grange Developer Founder and Director, James Dibble, said C6 represents the future of what is possible, except that it will be delivered now.

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

"The built environment is one of the three major drivers of catastrophic climate change, alongside transport and agriculture. With promising technological advances in both the transport and agriculture industries now working towards drastically reducing global carbon footprints, the property industry is lagging dangerously behind.

“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."

On-site energy production, a complete electric vehicle solution that can totally remove the need for fossil fuel-powered cars, ahuge focus on biophilic design to deliver tangible health benefits, and a building that actively sequesters carbon.

Post construction, Grange Development is committed to open source sharing the project’s research, design and construction documentation, as a call to arms for other developers to take up, evolve and further progress this building methodology.

“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 percent 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.

“C6 will bring together global best-practice in biophilic design, sustainability, architecture and engineering. Fraser & Partners shares our passion and vision for creating a viable solution to our built environments’ reliance on non-renewable materials, so together we want C6 to be the beacon of change this industry so desperately, and immediately needs,” he said.

C6 has been submitted to council for planning approval, with the building earmarked to launch in the market next year.