Year Completed: 2006
Awards: N/A
Awards: N/A
Philip Griffiths (Design Architect)
Calum Chalmers (Project Architect)
Consultants:
Interior Design:
Susan Griffiths (Griffiths Design Group)
Electrical Engineer:
Anthony Lukatelich (Wood & Grieve Engineers)
Quantity Surveyor:
Dominic Ward (Page Kirkland Group)
Builder:
Numans Group
Fremantle Prison was built as the Imperial Convict Depot and was substantially complete by 1855. Convicts were transported to the Swan River Colony between 1850 and 1868. The depot essentially served as a secure dormitory for convicts who were either sent on to hiring stations around the colony or engaged on public works. In 1888 it became the state maximum security prison and then closed in 1991 to become a tourism site. In has since been nominated for World Heritage Listing.
The area occupied by the gift shop was built as a guardhouse, with a room for guards, courtyard and earth closet. Over time the space was fully enclosed and the last use of it prior to the closure of the prison was for Contact Visits for prisoners.
The approach to the gift shop was to accept all the layers of heritage fabric, so that very little of the complex overlay of history was unpicked to realise the space for a gift shop. The space was simply stabilised, repaired and re-presented as a gift shop, leaving evidence of the earliest fabric and the last use as a Contact Visitor facility. A threshold to the original guard house leading to what was then the yard was left in place and interpretive panels of paint scrapes installed. The outcome is a gift shop positioned to catch the eye of visitors entering and leaving the site, but that the same time it makes a very discreet statement in the context of the presentation of the gatehouse.
