FORESTRY HEADQUARTERS
Location
79–93 Melville Street
Hobart, Tasmania
Completed 1997

Awards 2000
Australasian Lightweight Structures Design Award

1998
National Awards Finalist
Australian Institute of Architects (TAS)

Recycling Award
Australian Institute of Architects (TAS)

Colorbond Steel Award
Australian Institute of Architects (TAS)

1997
Australian Timber Design Award Finalist

Publications Architecture Australia

Architecture Review (Aust)

Japan Wood

The project recycled two existing heritage listed 1930s warehouses and extended these with a series of new structures to give a new office development with a total floor area of 6,000 sq m. The centrepiece of the new building is a 22 m diameter timber and steel framed glass dome, which covers a new natural urban forest with Tasmanian native trees up to 10m high replanted to replicate their natural ecosystem. This space evokes what is real to the foresters in the bush, as well as creating a new internal environment with what is regarded as the most innovative structure constructed in Tasmania in the past 50 years.

The recycling produced a very innovative building which was very cost effective against traditional new office environments, providing for Forestry Tasmania with a reduced overall leasing arrangement significantly below what they were already expending, and with the new dome and its forest provided gratis as a public space within the overall lease.





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