Australia’s Top Timber School Can Be Taken Apart Without a Screwdriver
Built from 850 cubic metres of PEFC and FSC certified cross-laminated timber, betti und knut architecture's Hoskins Building took the Grand Prix at the 27th Australian Timber Design Awards.
betti und knut architecture with the Grand Prix for the Hoskins Building at Sydney's Museum of Contemporary Art, presented with WoodSolutions. (Photo Credit: Early release supplied by Australian Timber Design Awards for one time use / Leo Mamede)
Every beam and column inside Wollongong’s Hoskins Building is cross-laminated timber rather than glulam, a switch its architects say cut the overall price by 10 per cent. The Illawarra Grammar School building, designed by betti und knut architecture, was named Australia’s best timber building at the 27th Australian Timber Design Awards in Sydney on Wednesday night.
Judges described the Hoskins Building as the first cross-laminated timber Passive House building in Australia, picking it for the Grand Prix ahead of a field that included Sydney Fish Market and the Adelaide Aquatic Centre. Accepting the award on stage, the practice said many more schools should be built the same way to get students thinking about sustainability.
“This is one of the rare occasions, where a school has accepted to clad a building in timber,” the practice told the judges of its Abodo thermally modified radiata pine façade. The pine was pre-oiled so it would weather evenly, and most of the façade has already turned silver.
Austria’s KLH Massivholz says it supplied 3,850 square metres of cross-laminated timber for the project, giving the architects one supplier for the entire timber structure. Built by Rohrig, the school also uses cladding, decking, structural flooring, and framing supplied by Big River Group.
Hilti quick connectors join the columns and beams, which the architects said meant no propping during installation and will let the entire post-and-beam frame come apart in future without screw fixings. Inside, the joinery is 27-millimetre three-ply spruce finished in Intergrain Enviropro Invisible, chosen to match the exposed cross-laminated timber walls.
Inside the Hoskins Building, where the architects say every cross-laminated timber wall was left exposed, with matching spruce panels lining one side for acoustics. (Photo Credit: Martin Mischkulnig)
Designed to the international Passivhaus standard, the school recorded an airtightness result of 0.15 air changes an hour at 50 pascals, four times better than the 0.6 the standard allows. That is according to the practice, which says the design cuts heating and cooling demand by 80 per cent and that its timber stores more than 600 tonnes of carbon dioxide.
A 1,000-square-metre green roof and 40 kilowatts of rooftop solar sit above the classrooms. Local blackbutt covers 20 per cent of the floors and forms the glazed door frames, with the stairs and balustrade built from cross-laminated timber with blackbutt treads.
The 2026 Australian Timber Design Award, a polished burl slab, carries betti und knut architecture’s name for the Hoskins Building. (Photo Credit: Leo Mamede / Australian Timber Design Awards)
So little was wasted that the architect used the few offcuts for small joinery jobs at home, the practice said. Besides the Grand Prix, the building won the Public Building category, sponsored by HESS, and was a finalist for the Sustainability award, which went to Das Studio’s Tonsley Technical College in Adelaide.
Tyson Infanti, director of business development at HESS, presents the Public Building award to betti und knut architecture for the Hoskins Building. (Photo Credit: Leo Mamede / Australian Timber Design Awards)
Kevin Peachey, head of built environment programs at FWPA and WoodSolutions, the awards’ major partner, said this year’s winners show “thoughtful material selection, engineering innovation and architectural ambition” coming together. He said the result is buildings that are “not only beautiful but high-performing and environmentally responsible”.
Kevin Peachey, head of built environment programs at FWPA and WoodSolutions, on stage with betti und knut architecture and the Grand Prix for the Hoskins Building. (Photo Credit: Leo Mamede / Australian Timber Design Awards)
“The real measure of progress is not just the excellence we celebrate through these awards,” Peachey said, with WoodSolutions aiming to give more architects, engineers, and builders the technical knowledge and confidence to make timber “an integral part of Australia’s built environment”. He said that measure is “how widely we can translate that excellence into everyday building practice”.
“Hopefully it will have implications for other schools as well,” principal Knut Menden, who runs betti und knut architecture with Bettina Steffens, said after the building opened earlier this year. It follows the practice’s modular Passivhaus classrooms in cross-laminated timber at the German International School Sydney, which the school says won two prizes at the 2022 awards.
As it stands, the Hoskins Building is still awaiting final certification to the international Passivhaus standard, according to the architects’ entry.
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