ARC Advance Timber Hub Researchers, Associate Professor Joe Gattas & Dr Liam Ottenhaus, from The University of Queensland, supported the RAW Modular (South Africa) initiative (a collaboration that delivers hands-on timber education, community engagement, and circular innovation) as part of a 2026 Worldwide University Network (WUN) project.

The WUN Project “Circular Timber Futures: Affordable Housing Solutions from Waste and Disassembly” ran early 2026 and helped develop practical, low-cost approaches to reusing waste timber in affordable housing by combining insights from informal timber reuse practices with innovative design-for-disassembly construction methods. Led by Dr. Johann van der Merwe at the University of Pretoria, the international collaboration brought together researchers from six WUN universities to document community-based timber reuse practices in South Africa, develop and test disassembled timber systems and engineered products made from reclaimed timber, and evaluate their technical, environmental, and social performance.

Dr Ottenhaus and Associate Professor Gattas contributed expertise in timber engineering, structural design, and circular construction, supporting the development and experimental testing of reusable timber systems to inform future large-scale research and industry adoption of circular timber solutions for sustainable and affordable housing.