{"id":26881,"date":"2025-07-10T11:46:36","date_gmt":"2025-07-10T01:46:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/?p=26881"},"modified":"2025-07-10T11:51:58","modified_gmt":"2025-07-10T01:51:58","slug":"nzs-quake-proof-parliament-building-is-assembled-like-flat-pack-furniture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/nzs-quake-proof-parliament-building-is-assembled-like-flat-pack-furniture\/","title":{"rendered":"NZ’s Quake-Proof Parliament Building is Being Assembled ‘Like Flat-Pack Furniture’"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

New Zealand’s new Parliament Building – which eventually will accommodate all MPs and 600-plus staffers – has reached a significant milestone, with crews installing the (partly assembled) mass timber frames, three stories at a time over the Museum Street, Wellington site.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is according to Rafael Gonzalez-Monterio, the NZ Parliamentary Service CEO, who told the NZ Post that the timber elements<\/a> – connected “like fat-pack furniture” – has seen crews install three different types of mass timber – glulam and cross-laminated timber (from Red Stag Timberlab) and laminated veneer lumber (from Nelson Pine) in stages over 12-months starting from late May.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tucked behind the Beehive, the six-storey building is the work of Studio Pacific Architecture\u2014the same studio behind Air NZ’s new mass timber hangar\u2014 is targeting a six-star Green Star rating (World’s Best Practice), and once operational will the country’s largest mass timber structure built to meet it’s heighest seismic standards (Importance Level 4). According to a Parliamentary spokesperson, construction is running “within a few weeks of the overall programme”, with the project team confident that the building will open in late 2026 or early 2027.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why did the NZ government opt for mass timber over steel and concrete?<\/h6>\n\n\n\n

Starting work in 2022, the NZ government said the decision to use mass timber frame – over traditional steel-and-concrete systems – comes with a wide range of benefits, “with the main ones being environmental, seismic resilience, and supporting local businesses.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Not only is it a better environmental choice than traditional steel or concrete frames,” the NZ government said last month<\/a>, “(but) the frame also contributes to the building’s seismic resilience.” And “that’s because timber is relatively flexible, especially in comparison to steel and concrete, which means it can be more resilient during earthquakes and other major events,” it said. Then there is the cost: “As the frame is partly exposed, this also saves costs by reducing the amount of interior finishes needed (the materials used to complete the interior surfaces of a building).”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wood Central understands that the site has been divided into three zones, each at a different stage of construction. This helps avoid delays, use resources efficiently, and ensures that once the frame is up in each zone, it’s quickly enclosed in a weather-tight fa\u00e7ade. The frame will take approximately 12 months to be fully installed across all three zones. Fa\u00e7ade installation for Zone 1, where construction is most advanced, is expected to start around the end of 2025. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New Zealand’s new Parliament Building – which eventually will accommodate all MPs and 600-plus staffers – has reached a significant milestone, with crews installing the (partly assembled) mass timber frames, three stories at a time over the Museum Street, Wellington site. That is according to Rafael Gonzalez-Monterio, the NZ Parliamentary Service CEO, who told the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26882,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_wpscppro_dont_share_socialmedia":false,"_wpscppro_custom_social_share_image":0,"_facebook_share_type":"default","_twitter_share_type":"default","_linkedin_share_type":"default","_pinterest_share_type":"default","_linkedin_share_type_page":"","_instagram_share_type":"default","_medium_share_type":"default","_threads_share_type":"","_google_business_share_type":"","_selected_social_profile":[],"_wpsp_enable_custom_social_template":false,"_wpsp_social_scheduling":{"enabled":false,"datetime":null,"platforms":[],"status":"template_only","dateOption":"today","timeOption":"now","customDays":"","customHours":"","customDate":"","customTime":"","schedulingType":"absolute"},"_wpsp_active_default_template":true},"categories":[3,38,37,35,47,39,114,68,31],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[70],"class_list":{"0":"post-26881","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-architecture","8":"category-architecture-and-design","9":"category-building-and-construction","10":"category-case-studies","11":"category-commercial","12":"category-mass-timber","13":"category-new-zealand","14":"category-sector","15":"category-top-stories"},"authors":[{"term_id":70,"user_id":2,"is_guest":0,"slug":"jason","display_name":"Jason Ross","avatar_url":{"url":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/J-Ross-headshot.jpeg","url2x":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/01\/J-Ross-headshot.jpeg"},"0":null,"1":"","2":"","3":"","4":"","5":"","6":"","7":"","8":""}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26881"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26888,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26881\/revisions\/26888"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26882"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26881"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodcentral.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ppma_author?post=26881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}