The 2025 WA architecture awards celebrated standout residential designs

The annual gathering of the Western Australian architecture community returned this year with a refined focus on homes that reshape how Australians live. The 2025 WA architecture awards drew a packed audience to Perth's heritage-rich State Theatre Centre, where jurors examined hundreds of submissions across categories ranging from small-lot dwellings to ambitious coastal retreats. The conversation that followed the ceremony, however, centred on a handful of residences that pushed boundaries in sustainability, craftsmanship, and place-making.

Residential projects dominated the headlines this year, reflecting a broader cultural appetite for thoughtful home design across the country. With cost-of-living pressures reshaping what Australians want from their properties, the winning homes demonstrated how architects are responding to denser urban infill, harsher climate realities, and the timeless appeal of a generous verandah. Read on for a closer look at the projects that sparked the most discussion among jurors, peers, and the wider design community.

Coastal houses that read the land

Two of the most photographed residences came from the state's celebrated south-west coastline. A timber-clad holiday home near Yallingup drew praise for its low-slung roofline and the way its blackbutt screening filtered the harsh western sun, while a rammed-earth dwelling overlooking the Southern Ocean near Esperance was singled out for its poetic response to salt-laden winds. Both projects demonstrated how local architects are drawing on Western Australia's regional geology, using materials quarried or milled within a short drive of the site. The Esperance project in particular sparked debate about how thermal mass can replace mechanical cooling in regions where summer temperatures regularly climb above thirty-five degrees.

The jury noted that these coastal homes reflected a maturing approach to the Australian backyard tradition. Rather than the expansive lawns of the twentieth century, the winning designs integrated native tuart and jarrah plantings, kangaroo-proof vegetable patches, and shaded outdoor rooms suited to long summer evenings. Several commentators pointed to the influence of practices like those featured on the Contemporary platform, which has spent years documenting how regional WA architects balance leisure, climate, and material honesty.

Laneway infill in the heart of Perth

Density without compromise was a recurring theme at this year's awards. A pocket-sized residence tucked into a former Northbridge laneway won praise for its inventive planning, while a triple-storey townhouse development in Mount Lawley demonstrated how thoughtful detailing can soften the appearance of compact urban living. Jurors highlighted the projects' willingness to engage with the National Construction Code's updated livable housing requirements, which now encourage step-free entries, wider doorways, and ground-floor bathrooms as standard inclusions rather than optional extras.

The conversation around these infill projects touched on Perth's particular market dynamics. Median house prices in the western suburbs have continued their steady climb, pushing first-home buyers toward well-designed apartments and terrace homes. Architects responded with clever storage solutions, courtyards that draw northern light deep into floor plans, and rooftop terraces that function as a substitute for the traditional quarter-acre block. One submission, a converted workers' cottage in Fremantle, illustrated how heritage façades can be preserved while interiors are gutted and rebuilt for contemporary life, a balancing act that resonated strongly with the Fremantle council's heritage guidelines.

Restoring the past without faking it

Heritage restoration has long been a strength of Western Australian practice, and 2025 delivered several standout examples. A meticulous restoration of a 1903 limestone residence in Subiaco earned the heritage architecture award, with jurors commending the team for sourcing replacement stone from the same Armadale quarries that supplied the original builders. Across the river in Victoria Park, a federation-era home was returned to its single-storey proportions after decades of piecemeal additions, a project that locals say has anchored the street's revival.

These restorations matter because they show how sustainability operates across centuries, not just across decades. Retaining and re-using an existing structure typically generates a fraction of the embodied carbon of a new build, an argument that is gaining traction as the Australian building sector prepares for tighter reporting standards under the federal government's trajectory toward net-zero emissions. The winning projects also illustrated how contemporary interventions can be legible without being literal: new joinery, skylights, and bathroom pods were clearly expressed as today, while original ceilings, skirtings, and verandah posts were preserved in their patinated state. For readers curious about how designers themselves live within these layered environments, a recent feature exploring a furniture maker's home offers a compelling parallel.

Passivhaus and the new energy conversation

Sustainability was unavoidable in 2025's residential category. The energy category itself drew strong entries, but it was a Passivhaus-certified residence in City Beach that stole the conversation. The home runs without a conventional air-conditioning system, relying instead on cross-ventilation, external shading, and a tightly sealed building envelope to maintain comfortable temperatures year-round. Its owners, a young family who relocated from Sydney, said their electricity bills had halved compared with their former inner-west terrace.

Jurors were quick to note that Passivhaus remains a niche pursuit in Australia, though interest is rising as the National Construction Code moves toward a seven-star minimum for new homes. Several practices around Perth are now offering Passivhaus as a standard service, and the awards signal that mainstream clients are paying attention. The City Beach project also showcased how triple-glazed windows, mechanical heat recovery, and solar arrays can be integrated without compromising the visual calm of a coastal residence. It is a quiet rebuke to the assumption that high-performance homes must look futuristic.

Rural and remote residential ingenuity

Away from the coastal strip and the city fringe, rural projects impressed the jury with their resourcefulness. A homestead in the Great Southern used locally milled marri and sheoak throughout, with a long, narrow plan that captured passive solar gain from the north while shielding living areas from cold westerly gales. In the Pilbara, a workers' accommodation refurbishment demonstrated how cyclone-rated detailing, BAL-29 bushfire provisions, and passive cooling can be combined without resorting to industrial aesthetics.

These remote projects often face supply-chain realities that city architects rarely encounter. Lead times for windows, structural steel, and even paint can stretch to months, prompting designers to specify materials that are available within regional WA distributors or to design for prefabrication. One standout entry, a cluster of staff housing modules near a remote mine site, was largely prefabricated in a Welshpool warehouse and transported in kit form, an approach that jurors flagged as a model for the resources sector more broadly. It also pointed to the wider question of how regional and remote housing in Australia can be designed with dignity, comfort, and thermal performance rather than as a temporary afterthought.

Small lots, big ideas

The final category that captured attention was the small-lot housing award, which this year went to a pair of semi-detached homes in Cottesloe that looked, at first glance, like a single residence. The shared brickwork, paired entries, and mirrored plans allowed the architects to deliver two generous three-bedroom dwellings on a block that would once have been considered unbuildable. Inside, each home opens onto a north-facing courtyard, with a central kitchen-living zone that can be closed off from the bedrooms for privacy during the West Australian winter.

The project speaks to a national conversation about housing supply. With Perth's population continuing to grow and lot sizes shrinking in desirable suburbs, semi-detached and terrace typologies are increasingly seen as a viable middle ground between the apartment boom and the detached house dream. Jurors also praised the architects' use of recycled brick from a demolition site in Osborne Park, an example of circular-economy thinking that is slowly permeating the Australian industry. Visitors interested in seeing more of the work shaping local residential design can explore the event exhibitors roster for further reading and studio profiles.

If the conversation around this year's awards is any indication, residential architecture in Western Australia is entering a confident new phase. From the coastal retreats of the south-west to the laneways of inner Perth, the projects celebrated in 2025 share a willingness to engage with climate, heritage, and density in equal measure. Subscribe to the Contemporary newsletter, and keep an eye on the calendar for the next Contemporary Wine In Design gathering, to stay across the architects and studios carrying these ideas into the year ahead.