To address the impacts of climate change, our imperative as architects is clear: How can we design the buildings needed for urban growth, while balancing the environmental costs of their construction? The late architect Myron Goldsmith once advocated that ‘a building should be built with economy, efficiency, discipline and order.’ Fraser & Partners adopted this philosophy for the design of C6 and accepted the challenge to measurably ensure this new tower doesn’t deprive the environment, but rather replenishes it.

C6 by Fraser & Partners, in collaboration with Grange Development, represents the next evolution of sustainable design. In a quest to improve the carbon footprint of its buildings, Grange Development entreated Fraser & Partners to pioneer a design that shifts the paradigm of renewable building materials. The result is C6, cleverly titled for the address, 6 Charles Street, as well as the symbol and atomic number for carbon.

James Dibble, Founder and Director of Grange Development, heralds the ground-breaking nature of this design: “C6 represents the future of what is possible, except we will deliver it now. What Eiffel did for steel and Le Corbusier did for concrete, Grange Development and Fraser & Partners have done for hybrid timber, representing the arrival of a new guard of sustainable building materials.”

At 189 meters, C6 will be the world’s tallest hybrid timber residential building. It will be constructed using 42 percent cross laminated and glulam timber – the result of extensive research with timber and structural experts – and use around 45 percent less concrete than a traditional building of a similar scale, drastically reducing the building’s upfront emissions. The use of mass timber for 42 percent of the building’s structure can be sustainably regrown in less than 1 hour, sequestering over 10,497,600 kg of carbon.

A model for carbon negative architecture, C6 will be carbon neutral at completion and continue to remove carbon from the atmosphere through considered material selection, planting and energy efficient technology. The building features an embedded network, powering the building with 100 percent renewable energy, while the parking strategy will provide bike share and an EV car-share fleet of 80 Tesla’s rather than including extensive car bays.

“C6 challenges an industry that hasn’t evolved much in 70 years. Our great hope is that it challenges the industry to do future projects better,” said Reade Dixon, Director, Fraser & Partners.

According to the architects, the project represents a number of firsts for the industry – which they hope will be the first of many. Whilst steel and concrete have been revolutionary for design and architecture, they are some of the most energy-demanding materials to produce. C6’s elegant façade showcases the mass timber structure, geometric crisscrossing across the monolithic form draws the eye down to the impressive four-storey, split-level, open-air public piazza at ground level.

Commenting on the concept for the design, Dixon said: “The external façade celebrates formally the mass timber structure with its reductive modernist gridded language and expressive diagrid. An architecture rich in material expression and pre-settlement native landscaping, proving that new builds can, in fact, rejuvenate.”

C6 sits in concert with the site’s pre-settlement history and its connection to the local Indigenous peoples and native landscape. Fostering social capital, a 500 square meter podium and forecourt will be shared by residents and the wider community alike as 20 percent of the site area is given back as publicly accessible space. An educational experience center, playground, public art, paddockto- plate restaurant and urban farming will contribute to year-round amenity while invigorating the public realm.

The on-site food production contributes to a modest reduction in food transportation while creating learning opportunities for the future of urban farming, uncovering possibilities for exploration. Internally, biophilic design reveals the timber structure within the apartments, connecting experience to natural materials. The landscape reconnects people and aids in re-habitation of the endangered Black Cockatoo.

To support this and as a catalyst for change, Fraser & Partners is committed to sharing regenerative design intelligence upon project completion. This is an open-source model designed to benefit the entire industry, the communities in which we operate and ultimately the environment.

“For us, it’s a building that proudly expresses the structure of the building – our solution to the problem – as the architecture. A reductive, modernist gridded language with an expressive diagrid, an architecture rich in material expression and native landscape,” concluded Lucas Menegazzo, Associate Director, Fraser & Partners.