Clayton
Project Overview
The proposal at Clayton Road comprises 22 residential apartments above a ground floor neurosurgery medical centre, with a two-level basement providing car parking, bicycle storage and building services. It was designed to be constructed entirely above ground in prefabricated cross-laminated timber, making it one of the earliest Australian apartment projects to combine CLT construction with Passive House performance targets.
I was recruited to CHT Architects specifically to lead their CLT and Passive House projects, reflecting the expertise I had developed at Maxa Design and through my Certified Passive House Designer qualification in 2014. I led this project as Project Architect and Passive House Designer from April 2016, coordinating a large multidisciplinary design team including planning, landscape, interiors, acoustic, fire, structural, civil and ESD consultants. Rob Nestic of STFAB/TGA Engineers collaborated on the CLT structural system.
Planning permission was obtained through two successful applications. The original permit was approved, and when imminent zoning changes proved favourable an amended application was rapidly prepared and also approved. Demolition of the existing building has been completed. Construction commencement has been delayed at the client’s direction while they pursue acquisition of adjacent sites to increase development yield.
This project is gratefully featured with the permission of CHT Architects (now trading as Life Architects), in whose employ it was designed. The design remains their intellectual property.
Project Details
- Location: Clayton Road, Clayton VIC 3168
- Project Type: Mixed Use, Apartments and Medical Centre
- Standard: Passive House Performance Target
- Construction: Prefabricated CLT superstructure, concrete basement
- Apartments: 22 residential units
- Ground Floor: Neurosurgery medical centre
- Basement: Two levels, vehicle stackers, bicycle storage, services
- Building Height: 13.2 metres
- Floor Count: 4 levels above ground
- Car Spaces: 31 (via vehicle stackers)
- Bike Spaces: 28
- Status: Planning approved, demolition complete, construction pending
- Structural Engineer: Rob Nestic, STFAB/TGA Engineers
- Design Practice: CHT Architects (now Life Architects)
- Project Architect and passive House Designer: Niall O Healaithe
- Passive House Certifier: Clare Parry
- Featured with permission of Life Architects
Design and Architecture
A Timber Building Opposite a Hospital
The facade is composed of vertical timber louvres screening the apartment balconies, with horizontal floor plates, recessed glazing and projecting elements breaking the four-storey mass into legible residential layers. A darker base grounds the building at street level where the medical centre and building entry are located.
Working with Rob Nestic of STFAB/TGA Engineers, the CLT superstructure was designed for maximum structural efficiency. By stacking panel walls and limiting floor spans we eliminated transfer beams and columns, reducing material use and maximising internal floor areas and daylight. All superstructure loads transfer to a single ground floor concrete slab, significantly reducing the building’s embodied carbon compared to conventional reinforced concrete construction.
The project required significant research into the emerging deemed-to-satisfy provisions for massive timber construction in the National Construction Code, and detailed coordination with fire and acoustic engineers to achieve compliance through a construction method that had limited Australian apartment precedent at the time.
Sustainability and Passive House Performance
PHPP energy modelling was undertaken throughout the design process to verify that the proposed envelope, glazing and systems specifications would achieve the Passive House performance targets. Thermal bridging calculations were prepared at every structural junction. The CLT envelope provides continuous insulation and an inherently airtight structural system, and the stored carbon in the timber superstructure reduces the embodied carbon of the building significantly compared to equivalent concrete construction.
The project was among the earliest attempts to apply Passive House principles to a mid-rise mixed-use apartment building in Australia, and to combine that performance target with prefabricated CLT construction at this scale.
What is a Passive House?
What are CLT & Modern Methods of Construction?
Cross-laminated timber is particularly well suited to multi-residential construction for reasons that go beyond its environmental credentials.
Factory fabrication under controlled conditions produces panels of consistent quality and dimensional accuracy that are difficult to achieve with conventional on-site construction, and the CNC precision of the cutting process means every opening, penetration and connection is resolved before the first panel arrives on site. This reduces construction programme time significantly, which is valuable on a constrained urban site opposite a major hospital where extended disruption to neighbours and traffic is a genuine concern.
The environmental case is equally compelling. CLT stores carbon for the life of the building rather than emitting it during manufacture, as concrete and steel do. Eliminating reinforced concrete from the superstructure removes one of the most carbon-intensive elements of conventional apartment construction. Combined with the Passive House performance target, which dramatically reduces operational energy over the building’s lifetime, this project was designed to achieve a genuinely low whole-of-life carbon footprint at a scale where such outcomes are rarely attempted in Australia.
For Passive House specifically, the dimensional precision of prefabricated CLT panels makes achieving the required airtightness thresholds significantly more reliable than conventional construction. Sealing the junctions between consistently manufactured panels is a far more controlled process than sealing the irregular interfaces that result from on-site timber framing. This is why many certified Passive House projects globally, and our own residential projects in Australia, use engineered timber construction systems rather than conventional construction.
Read our full guide to CLT and Modern Methods of Construction
Acknowledgement and attribution
This project was designed during my time at CHT Architects, now Life Architects, a large practice of over eighty people then in Collingwood (now Abbottsford) working across residential, aged care, educational and commercial projects.
Working under director David Carabott and a strong senior team including Mark Bird, Felipe Strahovsky, Jim Tsoukatos, Anna Marinelli, Mark Spraggon and Michael Bouteloup, I led several significant projects beyond Clayton Road.
These included Wills Place, a 39-storey residential tower now completed at 17-23 Wills Street, Melbourne, 70 apartments at 29-31 Queens Avenue, Hawthorn, and the transformation of the practice’s heritage offices at Oxford Street, Collingwood into short-stay apartments and mixed commercial space.
It was a work hard, play hard culture that gave me a deep understanding of property development: yield, efficiency, buildability, financing and the commercial realities that shape how large projects are delivered. That knowledge has been genuinely useful in practice. My practice ethos seeks to combine these sensibilities with sustainable long-term performance and low embodied carbon.
The scale and pace of CHT, with a large team delivering complex projects simultaneously, built a capability and confidence in managing big, complicated things that has stayed with me.
David shares a love of sailing and AFL football. We agreed on most things except his conviction that a colour palette need not extend much beyond the black and white of his footy team!
Working under Mark Bird’s mentorship through this period was also pivotal to my obtaining my building designer registration and completing my architectural re-registration in Victoria. I represented the practice in the architecture soccer league and played in the staff band, which tells you something about the culture David built.
This project is featured with the permission of Life Architects. The design remains their intellectual property. Images and content are reproduced here for portfolio reference purposes only.
Life Architects can be found at lifearchitecture.com.au.
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