CASE STUDY | BOOLA KATITJIN BUILDING NDY did extensive energy modelling with the architect and faade engineer to ensure the optimum faade solution CONNECTING TO COUNTRY The Boola Katitjin building breaks boundaries with its radical timber design and innovative engineering. Andy Pearson finds out how the project team achieved a 6-Star Green Star rating by working with the bush environment M Every non-standard fire projection detail had to be tested specific to the species of timber, because they all behave differently in a fire - Alex Rodger 20 July 2023 www.cibsejournal.com urdoch University, in Perth, Australia, wanted its spectacular new teaching and learning building B360 known as Boola Katitjin to be, among other things, an exemplar of sustainability. Lyons Architects response was to minimise its use of concrete by designing the largest mass timber building in Western Australia and the largest educational building built from engineered timber in the Southern Hemisphere. At 184m long and 30m wide, the four-storey building is supported on a glue laminated (glulam) timber frame, incorporating beams with spans of up to 18m, which, in turn, support cross-laminated timber (CLT) floor slabs and secondary beams. The buildings radical design is pushing the boundaries of what is possible in timber and faade engineering. Norman Disney & Young (NDY) was engaged by Lyons to advance what is possible in terms of sustainable building services engineering. NDY targeted the Green Building Council of Australias 6-Star Green Star certification for the learning centre, the highest standard under the rating system. The university wanted an exemplar sustainable building and Lyons was key in helping achieve that objective, says Renee Fourie, a director at NDY. Fundamental to Lyons architectural concept was to expose the buildings timber structure, outside and in. Exposed timber meant we could not have ceilings within the building, so we had to put our heads together to come up with a means of servicing the building while keeping the CLT soffits free of building services clutter, Fourie says. The expansive timber building is orientated along a north-south access, as part of Lyons Architects masterplan for a new gateway to the campus. One of the most striking elements of the design is the huge column-free rear entrance and gathering space, which is outside the building, but sheltered beneath its asymmetrical pitched roof at the northern end of the building. Inside, more than 16,000m2 of enclosed