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MOORE OR LESS HOUSE 
COTTESLOE, WESTERN AUSTRALIA 

Simon Anderson 



The Round House, a small prison, is the oldest extant building in 

Western Australia. It was designed by Henry Reveley and is pre-

sumed to be inspired by his father's well-known design for Jeremy 

Bentham's panoptic prison. It is an architecture of sheer and smooth 

wall surfaces and fluid space, built by the unskilled in an expan-

sive new world to confine the lawless. Durable and robust, not 

particularly repressive, an ideal gesture in a pragmatic world, soon 

too small for its purpose-altogether a perfect model for a modest 

house to be built by the clients themselves in a topographically 

similar location. 

The Moore or Less House was designed for a photographer 

and design couple-two bedrooms and two studies to permit work-

ing from home in the future. It was designed as a compromised 

Round House, but instead of concentrating vision within, its voids 

allow the House to capture views to the west above neighbours 

(without overlooking) to Norfolk Island pines and the Indian Ocean. 

The house is built in the manner of the commercial vernacu-

lar, so much so that a garage tilt-a-door was included. Brick piers 

give the House a certain agedness, their disengagement an ageless 

uncertainty. 

During the design stage, the clients became interested first 

in the Oriental, and then in the Price/O'Reilly House by Engelen 

Moore (George St, Redfern, 1995). So further compromises were 

made: an Islamic porch or talar was added, an uneasy symmetry 

emerged and a monochromatic interior developed. However the 

articulated structural piers and flayed service areas give the House 

sufficient life to accommodate stylistic modification. 

HENRY REVELEY. Round House, 1829. 

Office warehouse, East Perth. 

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1 Entry 
2 Powder 
3 Study 1 
4 Laundry 
5 Kitchen 
6 Living/dining 
7 Study 2 
8 Bathroom 
9 Dressing 
10 Bedroom 1 
11 Balcony 
12 Bedroom 2 
13 Garage 

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Basement plan 

EB 
Ground floor plan 

Longitudinal section 

: 
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: 
I 

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i 

---- -..J 

13 

First floor plan 

-- -: 6 
I 

I 
I 

I 
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Exterior photographs by Robert Frith. 
Interior photographs by Gaylene Trethewey. 

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