Hospitality Architects Perth | Rose Hotel, Freo.Social

HOSPITALITY ARCHITECTURE PERTH

Adaptive reuse, heritage venues and operator-led design — built around the realities of running a venue in Western Australia

Hospitality is a design problem unlike any other. The building has to perform as a piece of architecture, as a workplace, as a piece of brand, as a kitchen, as a licensed premises, and as somewhere people actually want to spend their evening. Get any one of those wrong and the venue struggles. Get the relationship between them right and the venue has a chance.

EEKOS designs hospitality projects across Perth and Western Australia — pubs, bars, restaurants, cafes, hotels and accommodation, often inside heritage or older buildings that other practices would prefer to demolish. We are registered architects and registered builders, which means cost feasibility, constructability and program are part of the design conversation from day one rather than a series of late, expensive surprises.

ADAPTIVE REUSE IS WHERE PERTH HOSPITALITY GETS INTERESTING

Some of the best venues in this city sit inside buildings that were never meant to be venues. Old hotels, warehouses, saleyards, banks, churches, shopfronts. Each one comes with a story, a streetscape presence and a structural logic that a new build cannot manufacture.

We have worked on projects including:

The Rose Hotel, Bunbury — heritage pub adaptive reuse and refurbishment.
Freo.Social, Fremantle — adaptive reuse of the Artillery Drill Hall into a live music, bar and food venue.

The reason adaptive reuse keeps producing the most memorable venues is straightforward. The building does design work for you. Walls have patina that cannot be faked. Structures have proportion and rhythm that modern construction will not deliver at any price. A long bar reads differently under a sixteen-metre timber truss than it does under a flat plasterboard ceiling. The audience can feel the difference even if they cannot name it.

Adaptive reuse also brings hard problems. Existing structure, services, contamination, hazardous materials, deteriorated waterproofing, heritage approvals, BCA upgrades, access compliance, fire engineering, noise to adjoining neighbours, and a thousand discoveries hidden inside walls and ceilings. These are not reasons to avoid old buildings. They are reasons to engage a team that has worked through them before.

OPERATOR-LED DESIGN

DESIGNED AROUND HOW THE VENUE ACTUALLY RUNS

The most beautiful hospitality design in the world fails if the kitchen is the wrong size, the dish pit is in the wrong place, the bar cannot service the floor in peak, or the staff have to walk the long way around three times a shift.

Hospitality is operational architecture. We design around the realities of running the venue.

Front of house flow — entry, host stand, queue, bar, table, bathroom and exit, with the awkward intersections designed out rather than left for staff to work around.
Bar layout and service speed — the difference between thirty drinks an hour and a hundred and fifty drinks an hour is almost entirely a design decision.
Kitchen, dish pit and back of house — sized and located for the menu and the covers, not for what fits.
Loading, deliveries, waste and gas — the unglamorous infrastructure that determines whether the venue runs smoothly on a Saturday at six.
Acoustics — the single most underrated factor in whether a venue feels good. A room that sounds wrong empties at ten o'clock no matter how good the food is.
Lighting layers — daytime trade, evening trade and event mode all need different lighting. Designed once, dimmed and zoned correctly, this is invisible. Done poorly, it is the first thing a customer notices.
Compliance baked in — BCA, health, food safety, liquor licensing, accessibility, planning and local government conditions integrated into the design rather than retrofitted later.

The pattern we see again and again is that venues with strong operational design feel effortless to be in. The customer does not know why the venue works. They just stay longer and come back sooner.

REGISTERED BUILDERS AS WELL AS REGISTERED ARCHITECTS

This is the differentiator that matters most for hospitality projects.

Most architects can produce a beautiful set of drawings. Far fewer can tell you, in a single meeting on site, what the work will cost, how long it will take, and what is going to bite you halfway through. Because EEKOS is also a registered builder, the design conversation includes:

Early, realistic cost feasibility. A high-level cost range based on the actual building, the actual scope and current trade rates — not a guess pulled from a national average.
Direct trade input. We can pull pricing, methodology and lead-time advice from the trades we work with every day on construction projects.
Constructability built in. Details are designed knowing how they will actually be built, by who, in what sequence and at what price. Fewer RFIs. Fewer variations. Fewer surprises at lock-up.
A pathway through to construction if the operator wants it. The same team that designed the venue can build it, or hand it cleanly to another builder. The operator chooses.

For hospitality projects this matters more than for almost any other building type, because the budget is usually fixed, the program is usually tight, and a design that cannot be built within the available money is worse than no design at all.

SPEED TO TRADE

EVERY WEEK CLOSED IS LOST REVENUE

In hospitality, time is money in a way that other sectors do not feel as sharply. A venue under construction is not paying rent reduction, paying wages on reduced trade, or carrying loan interest on a closed shopfront — it is doing all three at once.

We design with that pressure in mind.

Staged programs where it makes sense. Front of house refit while the kitchen keeps running. Bar relocation in two phases. Out-of-trading-hours work where the venue is operating during the upgrade.
Approvals pathway scoped early. Planning, building permit, health, liquor licensing variation, occupancy. Each approval has a lead time. We map them in the brief stage so they run in parallel where possible rather than in sequence.
Long lead items identified upfront. Cool rooms, custom joinery, specialised lighting, imported finishes, structural steel, switchboards. Anything that drives the critical path is on the table early.
Realistic, not optimistic, program advice. It is more useful to tell an operator the truth about a sixteen-week program than to promise twelve and deliver twenty.

The fastest projects we have seen are not the ones that skipped the design stage. They are the ones where the design stage was done properly, so the construction stage had nothing to argue about.

OUR THREE-STEP PROCESS

APPLIED TO HOSPITALITY

Each step is separately quoted and agreed before the next begins. The operator stays in control of cost, scope and direction at every stage.

STEP ONE

INITIAL PAID SITE MEETING + RETURN BRIEF

We meet you at the venue or proposed site. We walk the building with you, listen to the operating concept, look at what the structure and services can support, and identify the planning, building, health and licensing pathways that will apply.

This stage typically includes:

A meeting on site with you and any key operating partners.
Review of the existing building, services, structure and site constraints.
Discussion of your operating concept, menu approach, target trade, cover count and likely peak service patterns.
Early consideration of front of house flow, bar and kitchen positioning, acoustics, lighting strategy and back of house logistics.
Early identification of likely heritage, planning, BCA, health, liquor licensing and access compliance issues.
A high-level cost feasibility indication drawing on our experience as registered builders.
A written summary of our understanding of the project.

Outcome: A clear return brief and pathway forward. You own this document. You can take it to a landlord, to a backer, to council pre-lodgement, to multiple builders for pricing, or back to us for Step Two.

STEP TWO

CONCEPT DESIGN

Once the return brief is agreed, we develop the operating concept into a coherent design response. Plans, sections, the feel of the rooms, the bar position, the kitchen layout, the front of house experience, the brand expression.

This stage may include:

Concept plans and design options tested against the brief and the building.
Operational testing — bar service, kitchen flow, peak covers, queueing, back of house movement.
Material and finishes direction, tuned to the existing fabric in adaptive reuse projects.
Acoustic and lighting strategy at concept level.
Updated cost feasibility based on the chosen direction.
Coordination with planning, heritage, building surveying, engineering and other consultants as required.

Outcome: A concept design the operator believes in, that the building can support, and that has a realistic cost and program attached.

STEP THREE

DESIGN, APPROVALS + DOCUMENTATION

The scope is tailored to the project. Some venues need a full documentation package and contract administration through to handover. Others need approval drawings and a clean tender set so the operator can take it to market.

This stage may include:

Design development across architecture, interiors, joinery and finishes.
Coordination with services, kitchen consultants, acoustics, lighting, structural and heritage consultants.
Development Application and Building Permit documentation.
Health, food premises and liquor licensing documentation where required.
Detailed construction documentation, specifications and tender support.
Construction-stage administration and inspections, or a clean handover to the builder of the operator's choice.

Outcome: Documentation tailored to how the operator wants to procure the works — full architectural service to handover, or a tender-ready package the operator takes to multiple builders.

CHOOSING THE RIGHT BUILDER

FOR A HOSPITALITY FIT-OUT

When EEKOS is the designer rather than the builder, the operator has the freedom to shop the design to multiple builders on equal terms. For hospitality this is particularly valuable because the differences between builders show up immediately under fit-out conditions.

Capacity to deliver to a fixed opening date. Hospitality programs are unforgiving. Can the builder commit and resource accordingly?
Hospitality experience. Bars, kitchens, licensed premises and food businesses have requirements a general commercial builder may not have encountered before.
The supervisor on the ground. Who is running your job day to day? How often will they be on site? In a sixteen-week fit-out, daily presence is the difference between handover on time and handover three weeks late.
Trade relationships. A builder with strong existing relationships with kitchen installers, refrigeration trades, joiners, electricians and stainless fabricators will move faster than one assembling the team from scratch.
Communication style. You will be dealing with this builder constantly under pressure. Can you trust them when the program is tight?

The three-step pathway gives the operator the documents, the cost intelligence and the leverage to make this choice on their terms, before signing.

HOSPITALITY PROJECT TYPES WE WORK ON

Pubs and hotels — new venues and refurbishments, including heritage hotels and adaptive reuse of older licensed premises.
Bars and live music venues — small bars, cocktail bars, public bars and venues with stage and performance requirements.
Restaurants and cafes — full new fit-outs, refits, expansions and conversions of retail and other tenancies into food businesses.
Boutique hotels and accommodation — adaptive reuse of heritage buildings, refurbishment of existing hotels, new small-scale accommodation.
Function and event venues — adaptive reuse of warehouses, halls and industrial buildings into flexible event spaces.
Mixed-use hospitality precincts — placemaking projects combining food, drink, retail and public space.

If you are planning a new venue, a refurbishment, an adaptive reuse project, or a fit-out anywhere in Perth or Western Australia, the Initial Site Meeting is the lowest-risk way to get a clear, independent read on the project before committing to a builder, a lease, or a documentation package.

READY TO START?

The Initial Site Meeting is where every hospitality project should begin. One meeting, one fee, one document — and a clear picture of what the project actually involves before you commit to anything larger.

Book a meeting and Download our free project briefing guides

EEKOS — Building. Architecture. Interiors. Placemaking. 951 Beaufort Street, Inglewood WA 6052 • (08) 9271 6091 • www.eekos.com.au Registered Builders and Registered Architects • ABN 77 515 406 945 • ACN 147 020 764

BUILDING

ARCHITECTURE

INTERIORS

PLACEMAKING

(08) 92716091 WWW.EEKOS.COM.AU 951 BEAUFORT STREET INGLEWOOD WA 6052

​

Adaptive reuse, heritage venues and operator-led design — built around the realities of running a venue in Western Australia

​

Some of the best venues in this city sit inside buildings that were never meant to be venues. Old hotels, warehouses, saleyards, banks, churches, shopfronts. Each one comes with a story, a streetscape presence and a structural logic that a new build cannot manufacture.

We have worked on projects including:

The Rose Hotel, Bunbury — heritage pub adaptive reuse and refurbishment.

Freo.Social, Fremantle — adaptive reuse of the Artillery Drill Hall into a live music, bar and food venue.

The most beautiful hospitality design in the world fails if the kitchen is the wrong size, the dish pit is in the wrong place, the bar cannot service the floor in peak, or the staff have to walk the long way around three times a shift.

Hospitality is operational architecture. We design around the realities of running the venue.

Front of house flow — entry, host stand, queue, bar, table, bathroom and exit, with the awkward intersections designed out rather than left for staff to work around.

Bar layout and service speed — the difference between thirty drinks an hour and a hundred and fifty drinks an hour is almost entirely a design decision.

Kitchen, dish pit and back of house — sized and located for the menu and the covers, not for what fits.

Loading, deliveries, waste and gas — the unglamorous infrastructure that determines whether the venue runs smoothly on a Saturday at six.

Acoustics — the single most underrated factor in whether a venue feels good. A room that sounds wrong empties at ten o'clock no matter how good the food is.

Lighting layers — daytime trade, evening trade and event mode all need different lighting. Designed once, dimmed and zoned correctly, this is invisible. Done poorly, it is the first thing a customer notices.

Compliance baked in — BCA, health, food safety, liquor licensing, accessibility, planning and local government conditions integrated into the design rather than retrofitted later.

The pattern we see again and again is that venues with strong operational design feel effortless to be in. The customer does not know why the venue works. They just stay longer and come back sooner.

This is the differentiator that matters most for hospitality projects.

Most architects can produce a beautiful set of drawings. Far fewer can tell you, in a single meeting on site, what the work will cost, how long it will take, and what is going to bite you halfway through. Because EEKOS is also a registered builder, the design conversation includes:

Early, realistic cost feasibility. A high-level cost range based on the actual building, the actual scope and current trade rates — not a guess pulled from a national average.

Direct trade input. We can pull pricing, methodology and lead-time advice from the trades we work with every day on construction projects.

Constructability built in. Details are designed knowing how they will actually be built, by who, in what sequence and at what price. Fewer RFIs. Fewer variations. Fewer surprises at lock-up.

A pathway through to construction if the operator wants it. The same team that designed the venue can build it, or hand it cleanly to another builder. The operator chooses.

For hospitality projects this matters more than for almost any other building type, because the budget is usually fixed, the program is usually tight, and a design that cannot be built within the available money is worse than no design at all.

In hospitality, time is money in a way that other sectors do not feel as sharply. A venue under construction is not paying rent reduction, paying wages on reduced trade, or carrying loan interest on a closed shopfront — it is doing all three at once.

We design with that pressure in mind.

Staged programs where it makes sense. Front of house refit while the kitchen keeps running. Bar relocation in two phases. Out-of-trading-hours work where the venue is operating during the upgrade.

Approvals pathway scoped early. Planning, building permit, health, liquor licensing variation, occupancy. Each approval has a lead time. We map them in the brief stage so they run in parallel where possible rather than in sequence.

Long lead items identified upfront. Cool rooms, custom joinery, specialised lighting, imported finishes, structural steel, switchboards. Anything that drives the critical path is on the table early.

Realistic, not optimistic, program advice. It is more useful to tell an operator the truth about a sixteen-week program than to promise twelve and deliver twenty.

The fastest projects we have seen are not the ones that skipped the design stage. They are the ones where the design stage was done properly, so the construction stage had nothing to argue about.

Each step is separately quoted and agreed before the next begins. The operator stays in control of cost, scope and direction at every stage.

We meet you at the venue or proposed site. We walk the building with you, listen to the operating concept, look at what the structure and services can support, and identify the planning, building, health and licensing pathways that will apply.

This stage typically includes:

A meeting on site with you and any key operating partners.

Review of the existing building, services, structure and site constraints.

Discussion of your operating concept, menu approach, target trade, cover count and likely peak service patterns.

Early consideration of front of house flow, bar and kitchen positioning, acoustics, lighting strategy and back of house logistics.

Early identification of likely heritage, planning, BCA, health, liquor licensing and access compliance issues.

A high-level cost feasibility indication drawing on our experience as registered builders.

A written summary of our understanding of the project.

Outcome: A clear return brief and pathway forward. You own this document. You can take it to a landlord, to a backer, to council pre-lodgement, to multiple builders for pricing, or back to us for Step Two.

Once the return brief is agreed, we develop the operating concept into a coherent design response. Plans, sections, the feel of the rooms, the bar position, the kitchen layout, the front of house experience, the brand expression.

This stage may include:

Concept plans and design options tested against the brief and the building.

Operational testing — bar service, kitchen flow, peak covers, queueing, back of house movement.

Material and finishes direction, tuned to the existing fabric in adaptive reuse projects.

Acoustic and lighting strategy at concept level.

Updated cost feasibility based on the chosen direction.

Coordination with planning, heritage, building surveying, engineering and other consultants as required.

Outcome: A concept design the operator believes in, that the building can support, and that has a realistic cost and program attached.

​

The scope is tailored to the project. Some venues need a full documentation package and contract administration through to handover. Others need approval drawings and a clean tender set so the operator can take it to market.

This stage may include:

Design development across architecture, interiors, joinery and finishes.

Coordination with services, kitchen consultants, acoustics, lighting, structural and heritage consultants.

Development Application and Building Permit documentation.

Health, food premises and liquor licensing documentation where required.

Detailed construction documentation, specifications and tender support.

Construction-stage administration and inspections, or a clean handover to the builder of the operator's choice.

Outcome: Documentation tailored to how the operator wants to procure the works — full architectural service to handover, or a tender-ready package the operator takes to multiple builders.

When EEKOS is the designer rather than the builder, the operator has the freedom to shop the design to multiple builders on equal terms. For hospitality this is particularly valuable because the differences between builders show up immediately under fit-out conditions.

Capacity to deliver to a fixed opening date. Hospitality programs are unforgiving. Can the builder commit and resource accordingly?

Hospitality experience. Bars, kitchens, licensed premises and food businesses have requirements a general commercial builder may not have encountered before.

The supervisor on the ground. Who is running your job day to day? How often will they be on site? In a sixteen-week fit-out, daily presence is the difference between handover on time and handover three weeks late.

Trade relationships. A builder with strong existing relationships with kitchen installers, refrigeration trades, joiners, electricians and stainless fabricators will move faster than one assembling the team from scratch.

Communication style. You will be dealing with this builder constantly under pressure. Can you trust them when the program is tight?

The three-step pathway gives the operator the documents, the cost intelligence and the leverage to make this choice on their terms, before signing.

Pubs and hotels — new venues and refurbishments, including heritage hotels and adaptive reuse of older licensed premises.

Bars and live music venues — small bars, cocktail bars, public bars and venues with stage and performance requirements.

Restaurants and cafes — full new fit-outs, refits, expansions and conversions of retail and other tenancies into food businesses.

Boutique hotels and accommodation — adaptive reuse of heritage buildings, refurbishment of existing hotels, new small-scale accommodation.

Function and event venues — adaptive reuse of warehouses, halls and industrial buildings into flexible event spaces.

Mixed-use hospitality precincts — placemaking projects combining food, drink, retail and public space.

If you are planning a new venue, a refurbishment, an adaptive reuse project, or a fit-out anywhere in Perth or Western Australia, the Initial Site Meeting is the lowest-risk way to get a clear, independent read on the project before committing to a builder, a lease, or a documentation package.