One of my favourite buildings in Perth is Council House, home of the council of the City of Perth.
The building is modernist, built in the early sixties, and opened in 1963 by the Queen after the Commonwealth games and was designed by Howlett and Bailey architects.
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| Council House, Perth - March 2011 |
This is actually one of my favourite buildings of those built in this era - where brutalism had great expanses of concrete with exposed aggregates, this one is mostly glass with distinctive T shaped sunbreakers.
Thankfully, the building survived the nineties, when the state government where pretty keen to tear it down, despite the Australian Institute of Architects considing it an important example of modernist achitecture. Of course, many people would agree with the state in terms of tearing the building down, considering it ugly.
I beg to disagree, and so did the City of Perth - instead of tearing the building down, they awared a $25 million contract to refurbish the building, ensuring it's survival. Since then, the building has been listed on the WA Heritage Register as of 2006, a definate win to modern heritage.
One addition, added last year is certainly not something the original architects anticipated - 22,000 LED lights. At night time, the building really comes to life, as can be seen below.
Some green-types might show concern about the power consumption of such a setup - an LED uses about 3W - so the whole building is equivilent to around 30 vacuum cleaners - sod all!
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| Council House, Perth - March 2011 |
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| Council House, Perth - March 2011 |
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| Council House, Perth - March 2011 |
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| Council House, Perth - March 2011 |
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| Council House, Perth - March 2011 |
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