The Colonnade

1996. Subiaco, Western Australia.

1996 - City of Subiaco Centenary Award: Significant contribution to the built environment of the City.
1997 –Construction Industry MBA Overall Winner for Built Excellence (Co-Winner with the North West Shelf Project)

Much has been written about the Colonnade; its influence in the early 1990's on the local fashion industry was seminal; its nurturing of West Australian labels in the extraordinary incubator space that was Studio 388; its fabulous original mix of retailers; AND not least its celebrated restaurant Bibendum which set new culinary benchmarks for Perth with the genius and madness of Denis Hager who made Gordon Ramsay look like a choir boy.

All of this and the building itself came about because of the foresight of my first true patrons TSK and his sons. Wayne the eldest of the three, passionately thereafter set about pulling the Perth Fashion industry into the 21st Century and retail to another level. We all remain close friends and I shall forever be grateful to have had the privilege of working with and learning from TSK and his family. They have left behind a legacy of quality developments that few in WA can match. The Colonnade was celebrated by the local community as well as professional and industry groups as a unique and rich building adding significantly to the fabric of Subiaco. But more than that it celebrated that Perth could play with the fashionista big peeps of the East.

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 unique detailing that I developed for the building, its rich and complex brick and precast concrete facade and its interiors.