Sustainable ‘cardboard’ homes: a post-disaster housing solution?

ANDREW ROSE: My name is Andrew Rose. I'm professor of environmental engineering here at Southern Cross University and we're onsite today with collaborators from the University of Queensland, Associate Professor Joe Gattas and Mahmoud Abu-Saleem who have designed and constructed a bio-based, low-cost temporary housing solution and we're installing today a prototype of that house here on campus so that people can come in, have a look at it. We can get feedback from the community and try to make it even better in future.

JOE GATTAS: My name is Joe Gattas. I'm an associate professor from the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Queensland. I'm here today at sunny Southern Cross University to showcase a wonderful collaborative project that we've developed together over the last nine months: a bio-based temporary housing system for Northern New South Wales. It integrates two key structural engineering timber composite technologies that we've recently developed: timber cardboard composite sandwich panels which form the structure at the back and hardwood thinnings-based deployable structural frame up the front. Working with Southern Cross University we've developed a design that we think suits Northern New South Wales in terms of manufacturing supply and potentially would serve for really critical applications for temporary post-disaster housing as a system that can be fabricated locally, installed locally, and fully recycled at its end of life.

ANDREW ROSE: Here in Lismore we suffered devastating floods at the beginning of 2022 and we're still trying to recover from those floods as a community. One of the biggest issues in the immediate aftermath of those floods was a lack of potential housing and shelter for people who had been affected. My name is Andrew Rose I'm professor of Environmental Engineering at Southern Cross University and we're really lucky to be collaborating on this bio-based housing project with Joe and Mahmoud from the University of Queensland through the NSW Decarbonisation Innovation Hub's Land and Primary Industries Network.

MAHMOUD ABU-SALEEM: Hi everyone, my name is Mahmoud I am a PhD student. I am working on hybrid timber cardboard composites for post-disaster housing. How we started and why? Really there has been a numerous attempts to achieve low-cost confortable and efficient post-disaster housings but the results are still falling short of government expectations because the main problems that they face are the cost, local supply availability, timeliness and the need for more than just a roof. 

JOE GATTAS: My name is Joe Gattas. I'm an associate professor in the school of civil engineering at the University of Queensland. I'm here at Southern Cross University for the first demonstration of our bio-based housing system for temporary housing applications. This project was initiated in seeking to find a way to make a structural composite product from highly underutilised products within the timber and forestry supply chain particularly waste materials and forestry residues. So in the current system um at the moment the structural components consist of cardboard which is fully recycled or sourced as a waste product, bonded to plywood skins, that forms the main structural composite and the current configuration outperformed standard foam core structurally insulated panels by about 30% for the same panel density. As part of the seed project from the NSW Decarb Hu we're trying to address the next challenge in product development which is how can we localise it to a specific environment, specifically Northern New South Wales and how can we add a complete range of detailing features that protect it from weatherproofing and make it a safe and comfortable place to inhabit. As part of the project we've now completed a fullscale temporary house prototype which integrates all of these products with additional forestry residues and resources to create a complete lockup tiny house.

ANDREW ROSE: For Southern Cross this is a great project to be involved with. This is a perfect example of the kind of product that takes a material that would otherwise have been considered waste and instead turns it into something that doesn't just save it from landfill in the end but actually turns it into a high value product.