The award-winning Hobart redevelopment is one among Australia’s strongest examples but of hempcrete transferring from area of interest materials to main business building.
| PROJECT The Forest |
LOCATION Hobart, Tasmania |
BUILDER Hansen Yuncken |
HEMP MILESTONE Largest business hempcrete use within the Southern Hemisphere |
A significant Australian hemp constructing venture has taken out Tasmania’s high business building honour, giving hempcrete one other high-profile second within the mainstream constructing trade.
The Forest, the College of Tasmania’s reimagined former Forestry constructing on Melville Avenue in Hobart, earned Hansen Yuncken the title of Tasmanian Industrial Builder of the 12 months on the 2026 Grasp Builders Tasmania Awards for Excellence. The venture options the biggest business use of hempcrete within the Southern Hemisphere.
For these of us working to develop the Australian hemp trade, this recognition issues. Not as a result of a single award abruptly solves the boundaries dealing with hemp building, however as a result of it exhibits what can occur when a plant-based constructing materials is used at critical business scale, inside an formidable, high-performance venture.
A business venture, not a hemp experiment
The Forest is a $131 million adaptive-reuse venture that brings collectively instructing, analysis, collaboration and neighborhood areas in central Hobart. The College says round 300 workers and as much as 3,000 college students might be based mostly within the constructing, with the broader neighborhood additionally in a position to make use of its public examine and gathering areas.
The venture retained and reused substantial components of the prevailing website whereas including new mass-timber construction and different low-carbon supplies. Hempcrete was used at a scale hardly ever seen in Australian business building, together with the curved rammed-hempcrete pods that sit beneath the constructing’s uncovered Tasmanian Oak construction.
That distinction is essential. Hempcrete is usually mentioned via the lens of small residential initiatives. The Forest exhibits it could possibly additionally sit inside a posh public constructing with demanding architectural, acoustic, thermal and sustainability necessities.
Recognition from the constructing trade
Pulse Tasmania reported {that a} report 196 entries had been submitted to the 2026 Grasp Builders Tasmania Awards. The Forest’s builder, Hansen Yuncken, was named Tasmanian Industrial Builder of the 12 months, with judges recognising the size and complexity of the 15,000-square-metre heritage redevelopment and its sustainability targets.
The Grasp Builders award can be not the venture’s first recognition. Earlier in 2026, The Forest acquired each the Sydney Blythe Award for Instructional Structure and the Barry McNeill Award for Sustainable Structure on the Tasmanian Structure Awards. In 2024, earlier than opening, the venture additionally acquired the World Structure Competition award for World Future Training Undertaking of the 12 months.
| What makes The Forest essential for hemp shouldn’t be merely that hempcrete was used – it’s that it was used at business scale, inside an award-winning public constructing. |
Hempcrete as a part of a much bigger low-carbon technique
The Forest’s sustainability story is broader than hempcrete alone. The College says the venture achieved an estimated discount in embodied carbon of greater than 40 per cent in contrast with a similar-sized growth, via a mixture of adaptive reuse, materials retention, mass timber and different lower-carbon building selections.
The venture retained round 60 per cent of the buildings already on website. Some Oregon beams now used as wall panelling are on their third life: first utilized in Hobart’s Crisp and Gunn warehouse within the early 1900s, reused within the Forestry Tasmania constructing within the Nineteen Nineties, and now integrated into The Forest.
The hemp element was additionally tied into a neighborhood provide story. The College labored with Tasmanian producer X-Hemp to scale hempcrete manufacturing for the venture, demonstrating how a serious building job can create demand past the constructing website itself – via farming, processing, materials manufacturing and native trades.
Why this issues for Australian hemp
At Margaret River Hemp Co, we’ve spent years speaking about the necessity to transfer hemp past the class of ‘fascinating various materials’. For the trade to develop, hemp merchandise want real finish markets – and building is among the most promising.
One hemp residence is effective. One business constructing is effective. However the larger alternative is what occurs when profitable initiatives grow to be repeatable: when architects specify hemp supplies with confidence, builders know how one can work with them, certifiers perceive the pathway, and governments and builders can evaluate them towards recognised efficiency standards.
That’s when hemp begins to create significant demand for growers and processors.
The Forest is a helpful instance as a result of it’s not an idea constructing. It’s a functioning college precinct, delivered by a serious business builder, recognised by the structure occupation and now recognised by Grasp Builders Tasmania.
From standout venture to regular constructing materials
The Australian hemp building trade nonetheless has work to do. Nationwide requirements, formal fireplace testing, verified carbon knowledge, constant product specs and clearer pathways via the Nationwide Building Code would all make hemp-based merchandise simpler to specify at scale.
However initiatives reminiscent of The Forest assist shift the dialog. They present that hempcrete doesn’t have to sit down on the fringe of building. It may be a part of critical structure, main business supply and award-winning design.
The actual milestone will come when that stops being stunning.
When hemp-based wall methods, insulation, panels and different merchandise are merely thought-about alongside the opposite supplies obtainable to an architect or builder, we’ll know the trade has moved one other step ahead.
For now, The Forest is a robust sign of what’s already potential – and a well-deserved win for everybody concerned in proving it.
Learn extra
• Pulse Tasmania – UTAS The Forest wins high Grasp Builders award
• College of Tasmania – The Forest opens as a brand new metropolis studying precinct
• College of Tasmania – The Forest recognised at Tasmanian Structure Awards
• Australian Timber Design Awards – The Forest and its third-life timber story
Margaret River Hemp Co | Business Information | September 2026
