Founded in 2004 by Philip Gresley and Ahmad Abas, Gresley Abas Architects is an interdisciplinary studio headquartered in Perth, Australia. With a second office in Melbourne, the firm has its hands on a diverse spread of projects ranging from civic and educational buildings to undertaking major public art commissions, raking in awards since its inception. Its primary aim is to dissolve the oft-seen client-vendor barrier into a more fluid, collaborative venture by becoming a design partner who comes up with unexpected yet elegant solutions.
Here are some of the firm’s most acclaimed projects, particularly fanning across spectrums of community, living, and education.
Community
1. Wunggurrwill Dhurrung Aboriginal Community Centre
The 2019 Wunggurrwill Dhurrung Aboriginal Community Centre is a multipurpose culturally safe space for the Koling Wada-Ngal Committee of Indigenous people integrated with family support and community center. Set in Victoria’s Urban Growth sector of Wyndham Vale, it is a 5-star Green Star certified project and is often deemed “a landscape with a building in it.” Its user experience focuses on connecting visitors to nature, its regional antiquity, and to its immediate community. By providing its people with a sustainable workplace and societal wellness aides such as Early Years learning spaces and family support consultation rooms, it substantially enhances the locale’s wellbeing.
2. Wembley Golf Course
Located in Western Australia’s Wembley Downs, the Wembley Golf Course is a redevelopment project spread over 1902m2. In harmony with existing facilities, additional hospitality functions, office spaces, changing rooms, retail spaces, and an overall revamp of the layout’s circulatory sequence for better user legibility were contrived, arriving at its completion in 2016. The simple yet elegant forms are clad throughout with timber battens over insulated lightweight walls to evoke the familiar sense of warmth and refinement prevalent in traditional golfing clubs. The Canopy in-between, composed of fiber-reinforced lightweight plastic, stands as a muted yet unifying element between the existing and new structures propped on tapering timber-clad columns.
3. Dampier Community Hub
At the heart of Western Australia’s Karratha is situated the vibrant Dampier Community Hub, a 2016-completed design catering to the civic needs of the city of Karratha, Rio Tinto, and Dampier’s public. The firm’s replacement plan for the previous redundant structure on-site houses a refurbished community center, library and multi-purpose facilities, an early childhood center, and an adaptable business support center.
The site’s gently cascading maritime landscape was of primary concern during its design stages. While the construction’s primary built form rests on relatively flat ground, its landscaping has been integrated with the site’s natural landform resulting in an interesting array of children’s play areas.
4. Wickham Community Hub
The much-awaited 2019 redevelopment of the Wickham Community Hub is a purpose-built contemporary replacement project erected in the place of a redundant 40-year-old town hall. Located in Wickham, Western Australia, the hub is interpreted by locals as a momentous piece of social infrastructure that has been in the works for more than a decade.
The improved configuration focuses on fending off the harsh Pilbara climate and is oriented to capture valuable breeze passing by. Designed to connect existing on-site facilities to a new set of legible external spaces, it features zones with various levels of inclusive interaction and privacy to users.
5. Midland Youth Hub
City of Swan’s Midland Youth Hub is a safe and supportive environment dedicated to provide for and guide the youth of Midland, Western Australia. Manifested using simple materials and bound together with innovative techniques, this 2017-completed centerpiece features a recording studio, sporting zones, an art wall, hangout spaces, and several other recreational facilities. Also a safe space for those struggling with alcohol and drug abuse, the hub offers counseling rooms, mental wellness support, and an in-house clinic.
6. QLD Diversity & Destiny Done Well
The ‘Inter-Urban Diver-City’ by Gresley Abas Architects is one of the winning proposals for the 2017 QLD Diversity & Destiny Done Well open design competition. As a replacement for a typical residential suburban patch set in Queensland, Australia termed “the missing middle,” the firm’s proposal envisions a contemporary community-centric neighborhood with a density of around 100 dwellings.
3-storey multiple dwelling clusters, each with a permutation of four to six units of varying typologies, accommodate tenants ranging from singles to multi-generational families. Each lot is also riddled with unique sets of shared amenities such as play areas and gathering spaces, syncing to it all the comforts one might experience in a private villa.
Living
7. SODA Apartments
The 2014 refurbishment of SODA Apartments set in Northbridge, Australia, is a model example for an outstanding architect-builder-developer relationship. The 4-storey predating heritage building now houses 13 unique apartment units, each designed to sync perfectly into the site’s limiting configuration. Forcing the firm to adopt unconventional techniques, a new model previously unseen among this typology now graces the inner-city domain.
The complex offers its tenants a selection of rustic apartment units ranging between 52m2 and 140m2. A distinct feature is its Lindsay St. Façade, a vibrant street art piece painted along the boundary wall which is retained and restored to preserve the locale’s spirit.
8. Gresley-Monk Residence
Part of a suburban villa complex built in 1950s Bedford, Perth AU, the Gresley-Monk Addition is an extension integrated into an existing residence as a result of local urbanization that swept the area in the 2010s. Tailored to its backyard, the 80m2 boxy form melds into the prior design implementing very minimal changes.
Aiming to borrow as much light and space from its limiting surroundings without compromising on security and privacy from its now severely high neighbors, the structure strives to achieve simplicity and robustness previously amiss on site. Its seamless transition from exterior to the interior by incorporating vivid contrasts, recycled earthy materials, and full-height windows aid in artfully expanding its minimal interiors.
9. Bev’s House
This 2016 private beach house project is part of a row of townhouses set in the coastal suburb of Coogee, Perth AU. Bagging the 2017 AIA New House Award, the project delivers an elegant contrast to its interior-exterior relationship, making it truly stand out.
By shifting the structure from the rest of the row and pushing it towards the street boundary, room is made for a cloistered courtyard to run along its east side and a definitive focal point using steel portal frames and planting trellises is created. Its exterior features a mix of exposed brick and glazed finishes as opposed to the interiors that are bathed in pleasant muted tones, a clever combination of rustic and fluid artifice.
10. Yanget House
Bunbury, Western Australia’s CBD showcases the 2013 social housing project named Yanget House, replacing its 1960s built redundant predecessor with a 4-storey mixed-use development, which essentially jumpstarted local urban regeneration. Providing commercial-retail tenancy along with 37 ‘accommodation pods’ for those in need of or at risk of homelessness, this has become a government-funded success story that has created an immense local impact.
Hailed as a ‘striking public artwork,’ the façade features a folded anodized aluminum brise-soleil. The renewed design yields maximum benefits from its site. Commercial operations are exercised on its ground floor, while the levels above contain hostel facilities.
11. Scene Apartments
The 8-storey high Scene Apartments established at the heart of inner-city Perth, Western Australia, is a high-quality residential building with a capacity of over 42 units. Offering single-occupancy condos, 3-bedroom suits, and more, this 2010-build was initially subjugated to several contradictory local guidelines that had to be worked around with the authorities to acquire a certain level of clearance for conditional development.
The structure’s external massing is heavily influenced by a market standpoint as per the client’s demand. Astute use of primary colors and cladding along with an accentuated double-level penthouse up top ensures that its profile pops out on the local street elevation.
Learning
12. Curtin University Design & Art Precinct Relife
The Design and Art precinct of Curtin University, Perth AU, is currently receiving a total revamp and an ‘extension of life’ to its three prime blocks. Since 2017, an imperative growth to the campus’s capacity and facilities for it to suffice until 2027 has been in action and is carried out in stages without hindering the place’s natural functioning.
13. Cecil Andrews College STEM
Seville Grove, Australia is home to the Cecil Andrews College, a Science-Technology-Engineering-Mathematics centered day-high school completed in 2017 by Gresley Abas Architects. A learning environment primarily focused on cross-curriculum innovation, the building mirrors the school’s spirit aptly.
The core objective here is to allow seamless crossovers between different sects of study whenever necessary. To aid this, innovations such as operable wall systems that open up individual classrooms to one vast learning turf and open, flexible laboratories have been implemented, thus spurring the idea of creative and critical collective thinking. The school’s focal point being its entry foyer and model display space also behaves as common gathering zones for students to discuss and develop ideas, which again brings into action the school’s ideology of showcasing creative thought through prototyping.
14. Belmont Trade Training Centre
The Belmont Trade Training Center, completed in 2009, is a wholesome commercial training kitchen environment based in Belmont, Western Australia. To achieve its current standard, Gresley Abas Architects had to take a deep dive by conducting several design workshops involving experts from the clientele to gain proper design insights in the training center’s formative stages.
With a capacity to train 16 students, it accommodates multipurpose prefabricated work and demo-stations, appropriate storage, freezer & cool rooms, a seminar room, and also an in-house restaurant for 80 visitors.
15. Peel Health Education
Located in Mandurah, Western Australia, the Peel Health and Community Training Center is the current highlight of the Challenger Institute of Technology. Completed in 2012, the center’s open layout and vast atrium offer its grounds and facilities to newcomers as well as to students from surrounding quads. Regardless of being located next to the main campus’s service corridor, Gresley Abas Architects maneuver existing conditions, its dense population, and previously underutilized spaces to create practical yet pedagogical solutions.
The structure’s western façade features dual-toned perforated screens that serve it functionally and is also artfully positioned to reveal the center’s prominence on campus. The sustainability-centered facility offers teaching services spanning from an Early Children Studies center (a working model of a childcare center), to Nursing, First-Aid, and Aged Care learning centers.
