Curriculum Vitae

L. Jean-mic du Buisson Perrine — Architect

Founder and Design Director, Architects Perrine, Perth, Western Australia. Practising since 1989.

Qualifications

  • Bachelor of Applied Science (1979) — WAIT, now Curtin University, Perth.
  • Bachelor of Architecture (1982) — WAIT, now Curtin University, Perth.
  • Master of Laws (LL.M.), 2020 — University of Salford, United Kingdom.
  • Certificate IV in Access Consultancy, 2022.

Registration

  • Registered Architect (Western Australia) No. 1139, since 1989 — Architects Board of Western Australia.

Memberships and Affiliations

  • Australian Institute of Architects (AIA / RAIA), Member.
  • Association of Consulting Architects.

Intellectual Property

  • United States patent — modular housing (the Perrinepod system).

Practice History

Architects Perrine — Perth, Western Australia. Founded 1989 by Jean-mic Perrine and Mercedes Perrine, its only two founders. The practice operates as both architect and developer on selected projects, taking a financial stake in its own work for the design discipline and the long horizon that such commitment requires.

Perrine & Birch — a collaboration co-owed by Perrine Architecture with Jean-mic Perrine as design director and principal architect throughout. The name appears on heritage and commercial commissions through the 1990s and early 2000s.

Prior to Architects Perrine — Associate at Woodhead Australia; earlier at Tectoprojects, then the premier sustainable-architecture practice in Western Australia.

Key Projects

A representative sequence; the fuller catalogue lives on The Houses.

  • The Floating House — Geraldine Street, Cottesloe. Marshall Clifton Award for Residential Architecture, AIA WA, 2020. The clearest single expression of the practice's argument about light, breath, threshold and the missing middle. Precursor to the Six-Pack typology.
  • The Box Building — 918 Hay Street, Perth. 1999–2001. Eleven storeys atop a 1920s heritage building in the West End; thirty apartments over a cocktail bar, bistro, lap pool, gymnasium and carpark on a 13.6 m-wide site. City of Perth Heritage Award, 2004. Read by the AIA WA Chapter as "a seminal moment in high-density residential architecture in Western Australia."
  • The Perrinepod — modular housing system, launched 2007. A factory-made, pre-cast concrete dwelling craned onto a site and connected like an appliance — affordable, mass-produced, stackable to many storeys. Internationally covered in the UK, France, Switzerland and Spain.
  • The Terrace Hotel — 237 St Georges Terrace, Perth. Adaptive re-use of the Archbishop's House (c.1860) into a luxury boutique hotel. Sunday Times (London) International Small Hotels, Top 10, 2013; Best Western Interior Design Award, 2014; Gourmet Traveller Top 50 Australian Luxury Hotels, 2015.
  • The Colonnade — 388 Hay Street, Subiaco. Office, retail, food and beverage, civic. Subiaco Centenary Award, Commendation, 1996.
  • The Next Building — corner Hay & Milligan Streets, Perth. 2005–2007. Adaptive re-use of the Reid Buildings (c.1890) into high-quality commercial tenancies.
  • Former Leederville Post Office — 156 Oxford Street, Leederville. Town of Vincent Award, Conservation of Built Heritage (Commercial), 2001.
  • Mater Christi Church, Yangebup, and Mary MacKillop Church, Ballajura — ecclesiastical commissions. Archdiocese of Perth Jubilee Service Award, 2000 (presented by Archbishop Barry James Hickey).
  • 2/47 Forrest Street, Subiaco — adaptive re-use of a 1970s warehouse and office into residential and studio accommodation; the built form of the practice's sustainability thesis, "the greenest building is the one already built."
  • 92 and 94 Bagot Road, Subiaco — two narrow-lot houses on 3.6 m frontages (1996). The opening argument for the narrow-lot proposition.
  • 1a Primrose Street, North Perth — urban infill; a benchmark for the missing middle.
  • Perth GPO — Australia Post's heritage-listed flagship building, Western Australia. Heritage Conservation Plan and Heritage Agreement, master-planning and proposals, negotiated to approval with the Perth City Council, Heritage Council of Western Australia, and Australian Heritage Commission.
  • Bunbury Post Office — Australia Post. Redevelopment.
  • Ruisseau Creole, Mauritius — urban renewal of a former fishing village: village squares, offices, shops, restaurants, a conferencing and performance auditorium, child-care. Reported as the then-largest commercial mixed-use development in Mauritius.

Editorial and Press Coverage

Substantively covered in The New York Times (Perth feature, 2014, via the Terrace Hotel); The Sunday Times (London) International Small Hotels; Gourmet Traveller; The West Australian; The Sunday Times Magazine (Perth); TRENDS International (Box Building feature, 2001).

The Perrinepod alone was independently reported across four countries — the United Kingdom (sustain' — Built Environment Matters), France (Stuff), Switzerland (AVENUE / Peugeot), Spain (Arquitectura y Diseño), and the Western Australian national press (The West Australian, Sunday Times Magazine Perth, apartments WA, insite, green).

In 2005, Sunday Times Magazine (Perth) named Jean-mic Perrine one of the fifty most influential Western Australians.

Writing

  • The Gate — essay on the choreography of breath, Australian housing, and the morphology of dignity. Published on this site.
  • The Cruel Promise — book-length argument extending The Gate; manuscript in preparation.
  • Salt and Recipes for Floating Houses — companion writing in preparation.

Practice Philosophy, in one line

Architecture is not shelter. It is the moment a human being can breathe.