Walyalup Civic Centre by Kerry Hill Architects

Walyalup Civic Centre, designed by Kerry Hill Architects (KHA) and located within Walyalup Koort (formerly Kings Square) – a public square in the centre of Fremantle – is the latest iteration in a grand narrative of civic transformation across nearly 200 years. Replacing a modernist civic regeneration from the 1960s that damaged the urban fabric, the KHA design raises the question: Can modernism be used again, this time to heal the city and return urbanity?

The State Heritage-listed City of Fremantle was laid out in 1833 by John Septimus Roe, the Surveyor-General of Western Australia. The plan engages two axes, one centred on High Street, which runs down the centre of a promontory terminating at Arthur Head, and the other at 45 degrees, which allowed the township to spread along the Swan River and the coastline to either side of the headland. These two axes meet and pivot around Kings Square, which is bisected by High Street.

Kings Square has taken many forms since the 1830s, from a churchyard to a bisected square with a church and commercial premises. In the 1960s, a “civic redevelopment” resulted in the demolition of the fine-grain commercial buildings for a brutalist council administration building and multistorey car park set back from the traditional street alignment. The loss of street-edge buildings and prioritization of cars over pedestrians accelerated rather than halted Fremantle’s urban decay.

In 2002, the council identified the civic centre as past its use-by date. By 2011, developer Sirona Capital had agreed to purchase council land, providing the capital for the redevelopment of the civic centre. An international architectural competition was held in 2013, with a brief that required a complex mix of public, private and commercial functions, including council offices, a council chamber, a library, commercial offices, retail and access to the adjoining historic town hall. The competition submissions took very different approaches to the site’s challenging triangular geometry. KHA won with a design that strongly conformed to the geometry, resolving an urban problem but creating a functional one. The modernist design restores the street-edge conditions and adds new and contemporary urban amenity.

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The metal mesh that wraps the centre unites the building gives it a “monumental simplicity” while providing solar shading.

Image: Nicholas Putrasia

KHA’s masterstroke was its interpretation of the brief’s requirement for an “urban room” as a north-facing grass embankment that engages St John’s Church in a dynamic urban relationship across the square. The exterior location simultaneously activates the public domain while facilitating the interior planning. The embankment is regularly used to host public events, both day and night, and as a sunny lunchtime hangout. It pushes the public domain deep into the building, connecting it with an elliptical civic chamber located in the centre of the plan. Overtly public and accessible, this flexible space is a visual symbol of democratic government. The building’s perimeter “veil” lifts, creating a roof that frames the embankment to make it usable in hot and wet weather while completing the urban alignment.

The second ingenious move was to use the sectional quality of the sloping embankment to create a double-height library below grade. Sunken courtyards on either side of the embankment draw light down and connect back to the church. The raked structure creates a space that allows the library, council reading room, entry and reception areas to overlap, visually and functionally. There is complete visual transparency between functions, as well as through to the sunken courtyards and public domain, making the library feel connected rather than isolated underground. The sectional quality and functional layering are reminiscent of Rem Koolhaas’s Rotterdam Kunsthal, where the raking auditorium sets up a through-site link with a level change.

The main entry to the civic centre is defined by a projecting rectangular volume adjoining the town hall on High Street. This volume subtly shifts the building’s alignment between the town hall and a setback that creates more breathing room for the church. The interior space is an arrival and public exhibition area that also provides universal access to the town hall, without interfering with its heritage fabric. The double-height volume celebrates the town hall’s limestone side walls; restored and stabilized, these walls are top-lit by a linear skylight that disconnects the historic and new volumes.

Off Newman Court, a through-site link across the building to High Street creates a second entry, which engages with the civic “drum.” Running alongside the eastern sunken court, this link provides separate leasable office space at the southern end of the development as well as further visual connections into the civic functions.

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The design makes use of the slope to create a double-height library below grade, while physical transparency ensures that the spaces feel connected.

Image: Kerry Hill Architects

The entire building is wrapped in a hanging veil of expanded metal mesh that unites the composition, creating an expression of monumental simplicity while providing solar shading and allowing views out. Its top-hung tectonic creates a covered, verandah-like perimeter along the street edges, which is cut away to emphasize the primary moves such as the urban room, the through-site link and the Newman Court entry. The warm bronze mesh is visually sympathetic to the town hall while providing a counterpoint to its heavy stone masonry. The lightness and ephemerality of the veil are a change from the original design, which displayed a more tectonic modernism, and a departure from KHA’s more usual expression of monumental solidity. The veil screens particular functions in service of the civic- and urban-scaled expression of the whole.

The interiors of the public spaces are finished in timber and warm granite. These spaces are well-detailed, as one would expect from KHA, although their limited extent, and sometimes abrupt transition, speak to the impact of value management. The office spaces, both for the council and for leasing, are functional while being subservient to the overall urban intent.

KHA’s Walyalup Civic Centre not only restores the historic urban configuration of Kings Square (Walyalup Koort), but it also introduces urban dynamics that reimagine the potential of this historic place. It does this with unapologetically modern architecture employed in the service of civic urbanity – expressing street alignments, framing urban moves and relating to traditional materials. It restores public faith in modern architecture by demonstrating its ability to respond to urban conditions and heritage.

It is ironic that a modernist approach has been employed to restore the damage of a 1960s modernist development. Walyalup Civic Centre, however, is the antithesis of twentieth-century functional expressionism, triumphantly declaring that modernism can heal the city.