Roselea Shopping Centre

At the corner of Grindleford Drive and Karrinyup Road in Balcatta, a multicoloured LED-lit polycarbonate lantern marks the gateway to the new Roselea Shopping Centre, designed by Hames Sharley. The 6000 m2 centre pairs a Woolworths supermarket, its main anchor, with retail and medical tenancies, and its clean lines and farmland-inspired material palette set the tone for a new neighbourhood precinct in Perth, Western Australia.

Hames Sharley shaped the design as a response to the surrounding building fabric of the Roselea area, with materiality and scale considered carefully so the facades sit comfortably beside their residential neighbours. The forms pay homage to the site's market gardening history, an inspiration carried through the project's landscape and art.

Street-fronting retail wraps all four sides of the centre, broken into a variety of zones to give the precinct a distinct dynamic. The internal facade holds the entrance to the supermarket lobby along with strip retail addressing the car park, while a separate retail building to the south wraps from the internal car park facade to a glazed frontage on Grindleford Drive. Gable roof ends, continuous canopies, shading, landscaping and material choices bring a human scale to the development, providing weather protection and active frontages that allow passive surveillance of the street and parking areas.

The approach deliberately avoids the big-box feel typical of large supermarket developments. At its core the building is a contemporary steel and concrete structure, finished with a palette selected to create a village character. Materials are 100 per cent Australian sourced: texture-painted concrete walls in neutral colours match the residential surroundings on Grindleford Drive, and timber finishes on veranda awnings and feature walls reference the site's market garden heritage. Building services and waste collection are concealed from the street in a dedicated dock surrounded by retail, keeping a clear separation from the public areas of the site.

Completed in 2020, Roselea Village comprises the Woolworths supermarket, a BWS liquor store, nine smaller shop tenancies, a Lotterywest kiosk in the lobby and four medical practices in the medical building.

Credits: architecture by Hames Sharley. Photography by Reuben Black.