THE refurbished Hilton Community Centre near Fremantle took out the architecture industry’s top award at a ceremony last week.
The Paget Street centre underwent two stages of building and civil works late last year and won the George Temple Poole award as part of the Australian Institute of Architecture WA awards.
The renovated building also won the John Septimus Roe Award in the Urban Design category and was designed by Fremantle-based architect Bernard Seeber Pty Ltd and built by Oostveen Pty Ltd.
It was one of 124 entries across 10 different categories of awards and represents a dip of 18 over last year’s entries.
The centre offers community meeting spaces, a flexible-use workshop and runs in partnership with High Life Highland, which funds a small number of staff and some of the running costs.
Other winners in the commercial architecture section included JCY Architects and Urban Designers for their work on the 12-storey office building 167 Westralia Plaza in the city and Parry & Rosenthal Architects for work on the Southern Seawater Desalination Plant in 2008.
JCY Architects and Urban Designers also took home the Colorbond award for steel architecture for the design of Trades North Clarkeson building, which was built by construction company Pindan.
Architecture firm HASSELL, which won last year’s George Temple Poole award took out a commendation in the urban design category for the Claremont Quarter redevelopment.
The award jury said it focused on the success of projects delivered from the Hilton centre to clients and the community, which was more than what was asked and more than could be delivered by a simple building.
“This project successfully revives the ambitions of the original planning of the Community Centre complex of this early Australian garden suburb,” the jury said.
“The architects have artfully crafted and executed a contemporary layer of organisation and design upon a set of tired facilities, restoring them where appropriate and carefully inserting new elements including an all-important foyer building - a simple layered urban porch.”
In determining the urban design award, the jury said the new buildings were a delight and were clearly the result of patient and dedicated practice.
