Box Building

2001. Perth, Western Australia.

2004 - City of Perth Heritage Award: Adaptation of a heritage building to contemporary use.

At the turn of the Twenty First Century the West End of the Perth CBD was still in the early stages of its revitalisation. Box Building was important precursor to the revolution that changed Perth and began its maturing into a true global city.

Trends Magazine & The Sunday Times covered this evolution and the people who in part forged the revitalisation of the West End in mid 2005. The articles make great and colourful reading and you should have a peak. 

With Box Building, I began my fascination for modularisation and the industrialisation of the process of creating beauty in design and buildings.

Box came about at the end of a great generation of craft people who had served Western Australia very well. At the turn of the century they were nearly all retired. So I set upon the notion that I wanted to manufacture  the quality finishes that I could once rely on crafts persons to achieve, but no longer. At box I designed every element to be manufactured from the pressed stainless kitchen and bathroom benches to the concrete precast walls to the preformed bathrooms. It was great joy, a great challenge and a marvellously happy place to live. My family and I spent 10 years at Box. It was, as I had intended it to be purpose built for a city life. Diploma Construction did a marvellous job building it. Malcom Birch my then partner at perrine and Birch did a marvellous job project managing the build and Tony Lemme, now at Hames Sharley was terrific in executing the precise detailing that I wanted for the building.

Box remains in the opinion of many experts a seminal moment in high density residential architecture in WA.