Humdrum HQ
Conversion of a grocery store & shopkeepers’ residence into a new company headquarters.
Humdrum HQ
2022-2023
Team: Sion Bourne
Quantity Surveyor: Rawlinsons WA
Building Surveyor: Building Certification Services WA
Humdrum is a Western Australian NDIS registered organisation with a mission to combat isolation and boredom for individuals living with disabilities.
Acquiring an old Beaconsfield grocery store & shopkeepers’ residence in 2022, Humdrum engaged Bourne Architecture to provide conceptual design work for the company’s new staff headquarters. The proposed workplace attempts to retain and upcycle the existing shop building to meet present-day codes & regulations whilst providing a desirable workplace for staff and clients.
‘Indirectness’ and ‘ambiguity’ were key positions adopted throughout the concept design phase. For us the project was rooted in the contradiction between Humdrum’s expressive ‘non-boring’ attitude and suburban expectations of being contextual & neighbourly. The project is currently on hold as of 2023.
“I Am a Monument”: original illustration by Venturi, Brown & Izenour.
Chadwick Street
A compact cottage addition constrained by an awkwardly shaped diamond block.
Chadwick Street
2022-2023
Team: Sion Bourne
Estimator: West Coast Estimating
This existing post-war cottage is home to a small family and occupies a diamond shaped corner block within a local heritage precinct. The building’s external envelope at end-of-life, the owners engaged Bourne Architecture to restore and extend the existing dwelling. From the outset our brief was somewhat paradoxical - we were to provide additional rooms for the family whilst not expanding beyond the building’s current footprint area.
The proposed addition takes the form of a traditional ‘lean-to’ and contains all new bedrooms & wet areas. It replaces the condemned veranda with a compact cluster of new rooms.
Consciously avoiding the inclusion of corridors resulted with new rooms encircling a central 4.2 x 4.2m covered patio. This distinctive space aims to offer qualities reminiscent of the old veranda but with a newfound flexibility of use. Most of the projects focus and discussion gravitated towards this central patio space and the nature of its relationship to surrounding rooms.
This project was placed on hold in 2023.