667 Building

My client identified this building as being important to get this right as due to its location at the unusual street corner the right design would enhance the whole Leederville central area. He wanted to make sure that the building would do the right thing by the community.

My clients knew the importance of getting the design right so that it had an appropriate street presence that would benefit the whole local community.

A statement from Neil’s client about what it was like working with Neil: 'I’ve been involved with Neil for over a decade. We’ve worked on two major projects. So there’s been an ongoing association. There’s been some other projects we looked at during that time. The first project we worked on was a mixed-use development in Leederville. It involved a very difficult site. There were a lot of environmental and design considerations because of the location of the property. It involved a combination of residential, general commercial and restaurant type uses on a very tight and difficult site. The Leederville project was a unique site, a landmark site in the Leederville commercial precinct. We wanted to create something that was iconic and would create a landmark because of its location. We felt that if we hooked into that theme, the council would in-turn be supportive, and we’d end up with a better and more expansive project. The mixture of residential and commercial is common now but it wasn’t so favoured when we planned and built it.

Neil has a sense of empathy that comes through very strongly. He has a real desire to be empathetic regarding the site and context, and truly wishes to understand what it is that you want to achieve either from a commercial point of view or from a design point of view. He’s very considerate in the way he takes your aspirations onboard, and then looks to translate those in terms of his design concepts.

He’s also very mindful in terms of the commercial reality of things. Whether it’s the cost of building a house or the returns that you require on an investment, when you’re working with Neil it’s a very intimate working relationship and a very positive one. You’re not having a style or design direction imposed on you. Form truly is following function in that regard.

A lot of architects can be very consumed by the tangibles in a project, the physicality of a project. Neil has a real consideration for the intangibles. That’s what often creates a unique project rather, not a cookie cutter approach. If you can get into the intangibles of what’s driving a project – the context, the goals, the aspirations, the emotional drives – that’s what creates the real soul of a project. Neil’s very good at connecting with that.'

The area around Lake Monger was known to the Whadjuk Noongar people as Galup, meaning ‘place of fires’ and the wetland was used for food gathering, camping and for meetings and ceremonies. The mythology of the Lake links it with the Swan River mythology. Waugal is said to have formed Lake Monger by deviating from his route and rising from the ground at that point. On re-entering the ground, he cut a subterranean tunnel from the Lake to Melville Water – a tunnel which, according to tradition, still exists today. 

The area was valued for its food resources – kangaroo, emu, snakes, tortoise, mudfish, gilgies, waterbirds and their eggs. In the 1860s Aboriginal camps were recorded on the rising ground to the south and west areas of the lake, in the vicinity of present day Harborne Street, Kavanagh Street and Lake Monger Drive. A bush camp, although not in its original state, was still in use in 1923, near Dodd Street and Powis Street.

Stone artefacts and skeletal material have been found in the vicinity, and four Aboriginal heritage sites have been registered under the Western Australian Aboriginal Heritage Act (1972).

(Source: Cambridge Local Studies).

1829 – 1870: Initial settlement was by private settlers William Leeder (after whom the suburb was named) and John Monger. Monger bought 200 acres close to Lake Monger, whilst Leeder acquired some 288-acres. By 1838 Leeder had established the Leeder Hotel in Perth and was leasing out his estate. His house was on the south-east corner of Lake Monger. Between the years 1850 and 1868 the colony experienced an increase in the population due to the arrival of 10,000 convicts. This in turn resulted in demands for extra food production. The local wetlands and surrounding areas were largely used for market gardens, dairy farming and poultry farms.

1871 – 1890: Living conditions were difficult due to the problems of poor drainage, cesspits and the continual flooding. Several of the lakes north of Perth were drained. Lake Georgina on the Leeder lands, located just south of the Leederville Oval, was drained which then permitted Newcastle Street to be extended westward. 

With the completion of the Fremantle to Guildford railway line in 1881, the direction of the colony shifted away from the Swan River and promoted settlement to the west, north and east. Residential development in the north, however, was not rapid before the 1890s. To the north of Vincent Street, the district remained an area of large acreages with the majority belonging to

the Leeder family.

1891 – 1919: The gold boom marked a significant period of development in Perth. In 1884 the Perth district population was just over 6,000. By 1911, the population had expanded rapidly to around 87,000 and Perth was experiencing problems with overcrowding. The demand for housing led to the Monger Estate being subdivided in 1890. In 1891 the Leeder Estate sold 19 blocks of land, with five between the railway, Vincent Street and Monger’s Lake being sold later that year.

A government reserve was created between Vincent and Richmond streets. The western section of the reserve became the site of the Leederville Oval, Leederville Post Office (1897), Leederville

Primary School (1894), Town Hall and Police Station.

The 1897 PWD sewerage plans suggest that the predominant buildings were located along the western end of Newcastle Street and the area near Carr (then Leeder Street), Oxford, Vincent and

Loftus streets, including the Leederville Hotel (1897). In May 1895 the suburb became officially known as the Leederville Road District. (Source: Town of Cambridge ‘A Brief History of the Suburb of Leederville’).

The wetlands during this period were being cultivated by Chinese market gardeners. Some of these gardens were located along Oxford Street on what had once been Leeder lands.

By the early 1900s market gardening in Perth was done almost exclusively by Chinese people. Many of the Chinese gardeners were from the Guangdong Province which was predominantly a rice, fruit and vegetable growing area. They were familiar with small scale, intensive and communal agricultural labour practices. (Source: Western Australian Museum ‘Reimaging Perth’s Lost Wetlands’).

Adjacent to the site of 667 Building, running along Newcastle Street was a wetland lake known as Lake Georgiana which ended to the west just past Oxford Street and ended in the east just past Loftus Street. There are two market gardeners noted as having had their gardens associated with Lake Georgiana, being Lu Joy and Ah Fan. (Source: Western Australian Museum ‘Reimaging Perth’s Lost Wetlands’).

Fast forward to 1973 and the district of Leederville was cut in half through the construction of the Mitchell Freeway.

Recently there has been a growing awareness of the 1830 massacre of Noongar people that occurred around Galup (Lake Monger) with calls for information about the massacre and the per-European existence of Noongar people in this place to be on permanent display at the Lakeside.

With a petrol station having been previously located on the site of the 667 Building, the project had its challenges. The site had contaminated soil below the water table which required dewatering of the site with trucks 24 hours a day for a period until they were able to make the basement watertight.

The high-water table in the area is evidence of the former lake and wetland system that existed prior to the drainage system installed to dewater the lakes and drain them into the Swan River. Adjacent to the site of 667 Building, running along Newcastle Street was a wetland lake known as Lake Georgiana which ended to the west just past Oxford Street and ended in the east just past Loftus Street.

The original vegetation of the wetlands of the area comprised rushes, grass trees, wattle, tea trees, swamp paperbark, swamp banksia and flooded gum. However, by the 1890s, introduced couch grass (Agropyron sp) had become established around the Lake Monger, and in the early 1900s when the lake became a popular recreation spot, large areas of rushes were removed to create open water. The Mounts Bay drain was constructed at this time, to drain excess water from the lake to the Swan River in winter and assist with rush removal. In the 1920s and 30s, when the lake’s popularity was at a peak, much of the remaining indigenous vegetation was removed and lawns planted.

The building form responds directly to the unusual plan form of the site and the converging streets and resulting open space to the immediate western side of the site.

As the building contains basement parking, a restaurant tenancy, a small office tenancy, a whole floor tenancy and three apartments the external expression of the building is intended to reflect the diversity of the building’s contents. 

The building presents as a series of interlocking plans, blocks, and curved walls each representing a component of the diversity of the interior functions. These wall planes change from window in a wall to ‘hollow’ framed openings with no building mass behind, where balconies and terraces are screened as though veiled from the busy street below. All masonry forms are intended to reflect solidity and permeance, often lacking in commercial buildings. Deep window reveals and depth in the expressed thickness of masonry walls adds to this sense of permanence. The curved white masonry wall that turns the corner sits upon a rhythm of columns at ground floor where the glazed doors to the restaurant provide an invitation to enter the most public space of the building.

To the Newcastle Street frontage to the south side of the building in the orange painted finish the vertical recess signified the point of entry to the lift lobby and the vertical circulation to the floors above. The painted surfaces to the blade and curved masonry walls give way to a red face brick which is the deepest of the recessed surfaces, almost like the ‘inner flesh’ of the building.

Counterbalancing the articulated components of the masonry enclosure are the lightweight sculptural elements that further veil the exterior and bring fine grain detail and visual interest. The asymmetrical of the openings to the Newcastle Street frontage (orange wall) are matched by the fragmented awnings, broken at the point of entry to the lift lobby. 

At the curved corner fronting the public open space, the awning is faceted in light weight articulated mild steel framing which are infilled with a fabric canvas stretched at the perimeter.

Above standard galvanised Webforge grating has been rolled to match the radius of the building footprint as if provides a sun shield to windows.

The building has stood the test of time and has been a commercial success, having been fully tenanted for many years now since its completion. Neil believes that the building remains as relevant now as it did when built and it remains one of his favourite buildings.

Unlike many contemporary mixed use commercial buildings, the 667 Building avoids large areas of glass walls. Rather, the 667 Building presents as a masonry building with small openings for glazing which are provided with external shading devices.