Original Thinkers Podcast

The Timber Processors: Shawn Britton is Managing Director of Britton Timbers. Britton Timbers is a family-owned and operated Tasmanian business with a long and proud history spanning more than 110 years. Specialising in the sustainable harvesting, processing, and marketing of Tasmanian specialty timbers, they cater to both domestic and international markets. With a focus on quality and customer satisfaction, Britton Timbers offers a wide range of timber products, including high-grade sawlogs, veneer logs, and craftwood, meeting the diverse needs of the timber industry.

"From the forest through to the finished products that we manufacture, waste is critical to minimise, but it's also not looking at certain things as waste, but as opportunities. At the end of the day, sawdust is a product from the logs. So, our local pool is heated with woodchips, and a flower farm up the road, they use our sawdust. We supply the boiler fuel for McCain's Potato Factory. Everything gets utilised, and that's pretty important to us as well."

originalthinkers.com.au/shawn-britton


Links & Show Notes:

• Britton Timbers
• Britton's History
• Article: Tasmanian Veneer
• Species: Tasmanian Blackwood
• Smithton & Circular Head District
• James Fitzpatrick – The Seed House
• The Forest Practices System
• Article: Timber Certification Explained
• PEFC – Forest Certification
• STT – Sustainable Timber Tasmania

Episode Sponsor:

• Tasmanian Timber

The Growers: Justin Baily is a Forest Steward and owner of Baileaf. Baileaf offers tailored solutions designed to help private landowners and trusted partners manage their forests and land in a way that promotes biodiversity, builds community, and enhances their vitality and value for future generations.

" This is particularly relevant to the architectural space because the architect will be in a position to say, not only are we using these materials for these particular inputs, these materials have come from these particular areas, within this farm, this farmer took them down for these reasons, and there's some sort of market differentiation, which can happen.There's provenance. "

originalthinkers.com.au/justin-baily


Links & Show Notes:

• Baileaf
• Private Forest Estate - Native forests and plantations on privately owned land
• The Federal Government Policy to plant a billion trees by 2050
• Tree Alliance
• The Forest Practices Authority
• Greening Australia
• The Australian Carbon Credit Unit Scheme (ACCU)
• PEFC – Forest Certification
• FSC - Forest Certification
• Article: Certification Explained
• Forest Practices Officers

Episode Sponsor:

• Tasmanian Timber

The Growers: David White is the Forest Manager for Sustainable Timber Tasmania – a Tasmanian Government Business Enterprise that manages approximately 812,000 hectares of public production forest in sustainable ways.

"My old wildlife professor used to say, forestry is not rocket science. It's ten times more complicated. The misconception, once you go and burn it, that's it, the forest is gone. Well, it simply isn't true; there's a whole set of natural processes, it's evolved over millennia that eucalypt forest burns from time to time and it burns incredibly hot. Animals know how to move away from smoke, and then they know how to recolonise back. Plants have seeds that get ground-stored and then released during a fire, and so the biodiversity comes back and that probably is the biggest misconception – once you've done it, then you can't have it back. Nothing could be further from the truth."

originalthinkers.com.au/david-white


Links & Show Notes:

• Sustainable Timber Tasmania (STT)
• Forest Practices Authority
• Forest Practices Officers
• Tasmania’s Chief Forest Practices Officer – Anne Chuter
• Fire
• STT Quality Standards for Managing Native Forest
• Seed Zones
• Swift Parrot
• CUSP
• PEFC
• Michael Berger (PEFC) – Podcast Episode
• FSC
• Article: Timber Certification Explained: What you need to know about FSC and Responsible Wood

Episode Sponsor:

• Tasmanian Timber

Marius Myking, Director of Product Design at Snøhetta, is a strategic designer and creative force leading the charge in sustainable design and innovation. With an illustrious career marked by an array of prestigious awards, including the 2021 Dezeen Sustainability Award, Marius leverages his international expertise and strategic insight to connect industry, markets, and technology, creating designs that positively shape our future.

"At Snøhetta, the most important project is Snøhetta itself. We believe that we can change the world through architecture and design; architecture and design are of the most important tools to evolve society, to evolve behaviour, and to learn from – and sometimes we're able to gain a big impact and sometimes a smaller one. But, always pushing ourselves to explore, to get even better."

originalthinkers.com.au/marius-myking

Links & Show Notes:

• Snøhetta
• Library of Alexandria
• Ikea
• Ingvar Kamprad
• The Academy of Arts in Bergen
• Asak Flyt (Norwegian outdoor pavers)
• Sintef (research company)
• The La Crosette (Cannes Promenade)
• Studios of Snøhetta
• Dovre Mountains
• Hosted by Claire Bennett
• Produced by Simon Brooke

Episode Sponsors:

• Tasmanian Timber
• Cusp Building Solutions

James Fitzpatrick, the visionary founder of Fitzpatrick and Partners, leads one of Australia's top commercial architectural practices. His award-winning design studio, boasting a talented team of 45 architects, continues to set industry standards through their innovative architectural solutions.

"One of the things I'm really keen on is looking at different levels of housing. How do we start to solve our housing shortage problems in Australia? To be clear, that's a worldwide problem – but how do we do it in a smart way of doing beautiful homes for people, but at different tiers that they can afford? So in some ways, stop talking about it and time to actually do something about it."

originalthinkers.com.au/james-fitzpatrick

Links & Show Notes:

• Fitzpatrick + Partners
• NIDA
• Glen Smith and Associates
• Global Emissions Built Environment
• Embodied Carbon Design Tool
• Cross-Laminated Timber (CLT)
• Glue-Laminated Timber (CLT)
• Radiata Pine
• Australian Institute of Architects
• Architects Declare
• Living Building Challenge
• FSC
• PEFC
• Wood Solutions
• Article: Launceston’s mass timber building a glimpse into the built environment future
• IKEA Tiny Houses
• IKEA Skanska Joint Venture
• Buckminster Fuller
• Sainsbury Centre
• Biophilia
• CUSP Building Solutions
• Britton Timbers
• Hosted by Claire Bennett
• Produced by Simon Brooke

Episode Sponsors:

• Tasmanian Timber
• Abelwood by Neville Smith Forest Products

Michael Berger is the Secretary-General and CEO of the Program for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC), bringing over 20 years of expertise in environmental and quality management and sustainable supply chain development. He holds a PhD in forestry and has served as a lecturer in corporate social responsibility at the Technical University in Munich, shaping minds for a sustainable future.

"It's actually the core element of sustainable forest management that we try to find a balanced way for a society – how to go forward and not just to freeze something or to go backwards, and that's a serious, difficult task. But that's actually exactly what PEFC want to do; to be a dialogue platform for different stakeholder groups to find solutions, to find ideas, to find concepts, to find visions, how to manage forests, how to use a forest for different purposes in society, how to live with forests, and that, that's for me, always very important. "

originalthinkers.com.au/michael-berger

Links & Show Notes:

• Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification
• Responsible Wood
• Agenda 21 Categorisation
• The Potsdam Institute of Climate Impact Research
• Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
• Victorian Native Forestry Closure
• BWI
• PWI
• FSC
• TPAC
• Hosted by Claire Bennett
• Produced by Simon Brooke

Episode Sponsors:

• Tasmanian Timber
• McKay Timber

Ona Flindall is the award-winning CEO of Oslotre, a leading Norwegian architectural firm with a focus on innovative and sustainable timber constructions. A prominent figure in eco-friendly architecture, Ona shares her expertise through frequent national and international lectures, and by teaching at the Oslo School of Architecture..

"Because we're timber focused, we're very concerned with what surfaces you touch. The experience of your feet on a floor will feel much warmer if it's a timber floor than if it's a tiled floor. That's about the conductivity of the materials, right? So the timber will reflect the heat back at you, whereas the tile floor will drain that heat from the soles of your feet. You have to have a higher temperature overall for it to be experienced as a comfortable space to be in, whereas in a timber building because it has that reflective ability, you can lower the overall temperature."

originalthinkers.com.au/ona-flindall

Links & Show Notes:

• Oslotre AS
• Oslo School of Architecture
• CLT – Cross-Laminated Timber
• GLT – Glue-Laminated Timber
• Carbon Sequestration
• Villa Loken
• World Conference of Timber Engineering
• Timber Design Studios
• Original Thinkers Podcast - Dayne Davis
• Article: Launceston’s mass timber building a glimpse into the built environment future
• Hosted by Claire Bennett
• Produced by Simon Brooke

Episode Sponsors:

• Tasmanian Timber
• Porta

As Tasmania's Chief Forest Practices Officer, Anne Chuter plays a pivotal role at the independent Forest Practices Authority (FPA), balancing industry requirements with sustainable environmental practices in timber harvesting and conservation.

"Sustainable Forest management is about environmental values, economic values, social values, and trying to embed all of those different things when you're doing forest practices planning and forestry operations. Around Australia or internationally, the Tasmanian system is held in high regard, and a lot of that is about our emphasis on planning before doing, getting out in the field, finding out what's in the forest before the forest harvesting operation commences, and that's a really unique part of our system."

originalthinkers.com.au/anne-chuter

Links & Show Notes:

• The Forest Practices Authority (FPA)
• The Forest Practices Code
• The Forest Act Authority
• Fred Duncan Scientific Contributions
• Tasmanian forests compared to global counterparts
• Sustainable Timber Tasmania (previously Forestry Tasmania)
• The Tasmanian Forest Practices System
• Eagles Nest Reserve Requirement
• Threatened Species
• Permanent Native Forest Estate Policy
• State of the Forests Tasmania 2022
• Hosted by Claire Bennett
• Produced by Simon Brooke

Episode Sponsors:

• Tasmanian Timber
• Britton Timbers

• Biophilic Cities Australia
• Biophilia hypothesis
• The Transformative Potential of Resilience Thinking
• 14 Patterns of Biophilic Design
• The Emergence of Biophilic Design by Dr Jana Soderlund
• Eric Fromm
• Edward Wilson
• Steven Kellert
• YouTube, Google, Amazon, big companies using Biophilic Design
• Sandy Hook Elementary School
• Photovoltaics
• Hosted by Claire Bennett
• Produced by Simon Brooke

• Tasmanian Timber
• Cusp Building Solutions

• Make It Wood
• Planet Ark
• Wood Solutions
• The Ultimate Renewable
• Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Radiata Pine
• Timber Certification Explained (Article)
• Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)
• Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC)
• Responsible Wood
• Tasmanian Forest Practices Act
• Biophilic Design
• Eric Fromm
• Edward O Wilson
• Biophilia by Edward O Wilson
• Pollinate
• Glue Laminated Timber (GLT)
• Cross Laminated Timber (CLT)
• St Lukes Health Building in Launceston (Article)
• Atlassian Building (Green Magazine)
• Atlassian Building (TTW)
• International House Barangaroo (Accenture)
• International House Barangaroo (ArchDaily)
• The Incubator – Macquarie University Sydney
• The Incubator – Macquarie University Sydney (ArchDaily)
• Hosted by Claire Bennett
• Produced by Simon Brooke

• Tasmanian Timber
• Hydrowood