Student ingenuity takes centre stage at the World Conference on Timber Engineering
The 2025 World Conference on Timber Engineering concluded with a spirited celebration of innovation, sustainability, and student ingenuity. The Australian Timber Design Competition (ATDC), hosted as part of the conference program, crowned its winning teams in front of an international audience of timber professionals, engineers, and designers.
The 2025 World Conference on Timber Engineering (WCTE) in Brisbane concludes this afternoon with a celebration of innovation, collaboration, and the promise of timber’s next generation. Among the final highlights was the announcement of the winners of the Australian Timber Design Competition (ATDC): a national student design challenge supported by WoodSolutions and judged by leading voices in timber architecture and construction.
This year’s competition brief invited students to design adaptable timber housing for the Brisbane 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Athletes Village. Responding to the theme of “Designing for Legacy,” the brief asked participants to look beyond the games to create lasting, liveable, and culturally resonant timber dwellings that could evolve from athlete accommodation into thriving communities.
Award-Winning Student Projects
After an intensive shortlisting and review process, team 3 was announced the winner for their adaptable, sensitive, and sustainable project proposal. Special mention was made by the judging panel for their thoroughness in design. All judges were blown away by the quality and quantum of work undertaken by the student teams in such short time frames.
One juror remarked, “you can see the role of the structural design, I feel like there’s a team working together here .. They came up with a system to re-adapt the centre…”
The winning team members are: Charlie Bradley-Tasser, Tamara Birtasevic and Ruiyan Li.
Congratulations to all involved! WoodSolutions was proud to support the ATDC as part of its broader commitment to timber education and design excellence.
A Conference of Global Ideas
The ATDC was one of many highlights in an extraordinary week for Australia’s timber industry. WCTE 2025 brought together almost 1,000 delegates from 30+ countries, featuring more than 600 technical presentations, industry exhibitions, site tours, and keynote talks from global leaders in engineered timber, architecture, and building science. Key topics included carbon-smart construction, hybrid timber systems, fire and durability performance, and next-generation design tools. The conference showcased Australia’s growing leadership in mass timber and prefabricated construction, from policy to product innovation.