Mawson’s huts – illustration courtesy Australian Geographic Society

Shrines to the ‘heroic age’ of Antarctic exploration such as the Scott, Mawson’s and Shackleton huts have been out of reach to all but a privileged few. But there is news that a replica of Australian explorer Douglas Mawson’s wooden huts will soon be built in Hobart, Tasmania.

The Australian Geographic Society has joined forces with the Mawson’s Huts Foundation to construct the full-scale replica. It will be built in four sections at the Launceston campus of the University of Tasmania’s Architecture and Design School and transported by road to Hobart to a site provided by the Hobart City Council.

Foundation heritage carpenters who have worked on the actual huts at Cape Denison will construct the replica assisted where possible by students at Launceston campus. Leading the construction will be Peter McCabe who has his own construction business on the NSW Central Coast.

The Foundation and AG Society have begun seeking sponsors to fund the construction cost of just over $600,000.

“We’ll be approaching companies and organisations which currently have an interest in the Antarctic and also companies still operating that sponsored Sir Douglas Mawson’s 1911–14 Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE),” says the foundation’s chairman and CEO David Jensen.

”It will provide a major new tourist attraction for Hobart and generate revenue for ongoing conservation.”

Work will start as soon as $250,000 has been pledged, which will cover the construction cost. A further $350,000 will be required to replicate the interior as it was during 1912.

Photo courtesy Mawson’s Huts Foundation

The replica will be constructed of Baltic pine – from exactly the same source in Finland as the original timber used by Mawson – and Oregon pine. All the timber used will be the same dimensions as used on the hut at Cape Denison.

It will operate as a museum and be fitted out to replicate the interior as it was when occupied by the AAE during 1912–13.

“As a pre-eminent adventurer/scientist, Douglas Mawson is one of the AG Society’s touchstone heroes, and we’re thrilled to be joining the Foundation on this fabulous project,” says AG Society treasurer and Australian Geographic editor Ian Connellan.

“We think that the replica will be one of Australia’s finest specialist museums and we’re working overtime to see this dream realised.”

Information: www.mawsons-huts.org.au

(Editor: In the June issue of timber+DESIGN, we interview one of Australia’s leading conservators about his work on the Scott, Shackleton and Mawson’s hut projects. He also offers good advice about conserving and restoring old timber.) Subscribe now

Made with rain tree (acacia) timber salvaged from a major railway widening project, the collection is a key part of the phoenix-like arising of a once internationally successful furniture manufacturing business, brought to its knees by relentless Chinese competition.

The Laval Furniture story offers a lesson to those in business who plough stubbornly on – certain to fall by the wayside but for some lateral thinking and the courage to change direction.

Marc Laval-Jardin – his solid acacia tables are pressure treated against borer, sanded and, if for the outdoors, oiled regularly. Photo: ©timber+design

Marc Laval-Jardin, an engineer from the UK, moved to Malaysia about 30 years ago and immediately began making high-quality, original outdoor and patio furniture for export markets in Europe, Australia and the Middle East. At its peak, Laval was employing 200 people and shipping 300 40ft containers of product annually. But with the new century came the Chinese competition: not original, not high quality, but certainly cheap. And it was assumed Laval would be squeezed out, like thousands of other furniture makers before.

A decade on, Laval-Jardin says business could hardly be better. He now employs just 10 people and exports on a limited basis, but his prices are 10 times higher and he has all the business he wants, thank you very much!

The second quarter (June) edition of timber+DESIGN will carry the full story behind the Lazarus-like rising of Laval, and explain how collaboration with top furniture designers from Australia and Canada and a move to largely recycled materials has fired the company right up the value chain. Subscribe now

Photo: ©timber+design

US-born Wade Cornell (pictured) has been rattling cages in ‘down under’ forestry and horticulture for almost 30 years – not least with his unshakeable belief that locally grown redwood of the right strain can out-perform western red cedar.

Cornell, who now lives between homes in New Zealand and Australia, has invested heavily through his company Diversified Forests Ltd in genetic research and redwood plantings (among many other species) in both countries.

As with western red cedar (WRC), redwood is more a construction than a structural timber, and the giant old growth trees were used in preference to WRC. But North American architects moved to WRC over second-growth redwood when they did not perform as well as the ‘originals’.

“Now, we have come full circle to where all the old-growth WRC is also almost gone, and the second growth is not very good,” says Cornell.

Californian redwood grown in Australasia could be the ‘new’ western red cedar. Photo: ©timber+design

“This leaves an interesting gap in the market for lightweight, durable and stable timbers. And the good part about redwood is that it offers the potential through cloning to create a [genotype] that is strictly durable and stable, and better than currently available WRC.”

Although there are extensive redwood plantings in Australasia, Cornell doubts they will be of much value because of inappropriate clone selection.

The full story about Wade Cornell’s attitude to “cookie-cutter forestry” and his work on the development of proven-performance, plantation-grown species such as redwood and Australian white cedar will feature in the June edition of timber+DESIGN. Subscribe now for the printed edition.

Illegal logging bill back-passed for third time

The good news for Australia’s already carbon tax-terrified timber industry is that the Gillard government’s Illegal Logging Prohibition Bill 2011 is unlikely to see fresh light of day before the end of this year.

Nobody denies the need to tighten borders against the trade in illegally sourced wood, but this Bill remains too much of a suck-it-and-see solution to be let loose without further tightening. Having just been referred to Parliament for a third inquiry – this time to the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade – it is now unlikely to resurface until the end of the year. By which time, given current events, there could even have been a change of government.

New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, Canada and the US are among those who have complained that the Bill has not been adequately discussed with relevant trading partners. Some timber exporters feel similarly shortchanged.

A recent submission from the American Hardwood Export Council (AHEC) said trade-related objections to the Bill could be dealt with through outreach activities making clear that:

• it doesn’t impose a requirement to demonstrate proof of legality, or full traceability, on timber products imported into Australia

• the burden of proof for a criminal conviction under the prohibition articles of the Bill lies with the Australian Government that would have to demonstrate wood is illegally sourced in order to prosecute

• the Bill is founded on a risk-based approach to avoid imposition of additional and un­necessary controls on timber which are negligible risk with respect to illegal logging

• the government intends to recognise a wide range of credible procedures for demonstrating negligible risk which are adapted to the particular circumstances prevailing in individual supply countries

• there is no intent by the government to impose mandatory requirements for for­est certification or other evidence of “forest sustainability” on imported wood products in the absence of an internationally-recognised and WTO-compliant framework for verification of sustainability.

The Australian Forest Products Association (AFPA) is working with forestry minister Ludwig’s office and the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry on guidelines for processors and importers on compliance obligations under the Act.

Christchurch earthquake damage, 2010

Two buildings soon to be constructed in Christchurch could lead the way for a seismically safer New Zealand.

The city will soon be home to two commercial buildings built with EXPAN, a new post-tensioned laminated veneer lumber (LVL) building system that makes lightweight, seismically safe multi-story timber buildings commercially viable.

Developed at the universities of Canterbury, Auckland and Technology Sydney, as part of the Structural Timber Innovation Company (STIC), EXPAN buildings can be constructed quickly, at an equivalent cost to steel or concrete – and with all the reassurance of lightweight construction.

EXPAN’s unique post-tensioned technology combined with the flexibility of timber also delivers superior seismic capabilities. And if needed, buildings can be deconstructed and rebuilt.

STIC chief executive Robert Finch says the Christchurch timber buildings will be “hugely significant” examples of cutting-edge seismic design, and damage avoidance technology.

“Commercial property owners and insurers are now demanding buildings that are safe in a major event and can be rapidly reoccupied – minimising business interruption. Seismic capabilities are certainly top of mind for building owners in New Zealand now.

“We’ve seeing a number of queries from and throughout New Zealand as building owners take a fresh look at the seismic risk associated with buildings. We’re also taking calls from people contemplating new builds who are looking to construct something that will offer resistance to seismic activity.”

Dr Finch says there is a strong correlation between the interest seen from EXPAN licensees and global building industry trends.

The Apex, Arc, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, England. Photo: Morley Von Sternberg

Bury St Edmunds is one of England’s best-preserved historic market towns, with its largely unspoiled medieval urban structure. Four hectares adjacent to the market centre of town, the site of the former Cattle Market, has long been an obvious choice for future growth.

Successive schemes for the site failed to engage local support until the borough council sought a development partner to design, fund and implement a retail-led scheme for the site to safeguard Bury’s trading future.

Many of Bury’s historic buildings are timber-framed, and the modern development builds on that tradition with a framed timber superstructure over a concrete retail ground floor ‘table’. Expressed frames and boarded softwood infill have a sacrificial stain applied to mask differential effects as they weather to an even grey.

The full story on this award-winning project in the June timber+DESIGN. Subscribe now for your own printed edition

Head-on approach not the answer

The New Zealand forest industry has been called on to move away from its boom-and-bust export log trade, and to avoid “destructive behaviour” in international markets.

A new cross-sector plan that could see the country’s annual forest products earnings at NZ$12 billion has been developed by the Wood Council of NZ (Woodco). The report estimates NZ’s log and wood products exports could rise in value from $4.6 billion last March to $12 billion within 10 years – but only if there is a huge increase in high-value manufacturing.

Woodco board member Lees Seymour says the strategy is “hugely important” for the industry and has received wide support. “We think there’s a lot of opportunity that’s available for the industry if we take the right strategic actions.”But with New Zealand’s log trade so heavily dependent on Chinese demand (down 17% for the first quarter of 2012 and showing no sign of recovery), depressed domestic building and almost no investment capital (government or private) floating around, achieving this worthy goal will require a superhuman effort.

Woodco intends to hire a manager to help the industry implement the strategy – and with a 40% increase in harvestable wood supply coming available in the next decade, there is no time to lose.

Photo: Dianna Snape

How to reconcile the march of suburban sprawl with a sensitive environment? This lifestyle centre at Saltwater Coast, a major new housing subdivision near Point Cook (Victoria, Australia), provides a solution.

The development will eventually accommodate 4000 residents and thematically exploits its proximity to a beautiful stretch on the western shores of Port Phillip Bay. But there is also the matter of a significant bird migration area.

The developers have achieved this largely through investment in public spaces with a landscape solution that is indebted to the local beach context, and by insisting on a compatible material palette for individual houses.

The full story on the Saltwater development and its new lifestyle centre designed by NH architecture appears in the June edition of timber+DESIGN. Subscribe to the print edition now.

Photo: ©timber+design

It is no secret that Australasian timber importers are having a field day on the back of over-priced local currencies and domestic hardwood supply issues. US species are among the major beneficiaries.

American hardwoods have enjoyed a significant increase in demand over the last two years, particularly in Australia where the combination of architectural and designer demand and the favourable exchange rate have seen a 36% increase in US hardwood lumber volumes. Similarly, US hardwood veneer imports across Australia and New Zealand have doubled, with particularly strong demand for white oak, maple and walnut.

American white oak continues to spearhead the growth in lumber imports and accounts for over 80% of all shipments to Australia. Its on-trend colour and striking plain-sawn grain pattern makes it a highly desirable choice for flooring, stairs, joinery and furniture.

Specifiers are also turning to ash, red oak and tulipwood as they become aware of the sustainability and performance benefits of lesser-known ‘certified legal’ timbers.