“Designed to revive and reactivate its town centre, the Claremont Hotel is a warm and welcoming meeting place that pays homage to the fabric of the existing building. The Claremont holds a dear place in locals’ hearts, making it a complex and sensitive endeavour that required an enormous number of collaborators beyond just our team to make it a success,” said Kylee Schoonens, Principal of the Rothelowman architecture firm.
Perth, the capital city of Western Australia, extends eastwards from the Indian Ocean as far as the coastal plain of the Darling Ranges and enjoys a temperate, Mediterranean climate.
The new venue, located between Bay View Terrace and Gugeri Street in the city’s Claremont suburb, is the result of a major redevelopment project that preserved the historic bar while adding a dining room, courtyard and rooftop bar offering panoramic views of the city. The project focused on maximising natural light by using skylights above the courtyard to enable sunlight to penetrate deep into the ground floor areas.
The renewed back-of-house amenities enhance the functionality of the bar and dining spaces, while the courtyard is now suitable for hosting events.
Tiles from Ceramiche Piemme’s Venetian Marble collection were chosen for the bar floor and the staircase leading to the rooftop terrace due to their retro appeal, echoing the Claremont bar’s original late 19th-century spaces but with a contemporary twist. This hi-tech porcelain stoneware tile collection reimagines the irregular design of the terrazzo paving used on traditional Venetian balconies.
The Rainbow shade, the lightest of the four colours in this terrazzo-inspired collection (the others being Cloud, Fog and Storm, the darkest), is created from a harmonious blend of different coloured fragments that recall the iridescent beauty of Venetian pavings made from gravel, small marble fragments, pottery and glass.
The collection pays homage to Italian materials and craftsmanship, reinterpreted in porcelain stoneware produced using the latest technologies to guarantee durability and hygiene.