Tomich House by Mark Jeavons Architect and Ohlo Studio

The Bulgarian-born Brutalist architect Iwan Iwanoff designed more than 100 houses in his adopted hometown of Perth before he died in 1986. Only about 30 of them survive today, one of which is Tomich House at City Beach, built in 1971.

The striking white, curvilinear house that makes extensive use of concrete blocks is one of only a handful of Iwanoff’s buildings with a State Heritage listing and has recently emerged from a painstaking four-year renovation. The project, which was undertaken by architect Mark Jeavons with interiors by Jen Lowe of Ohlo Studio, has resulted in a home that is as close to Iwanoff’s original vision as possible.

The striking white, curvilinear house that makes extensive use of concrete blocks is one of only a handful of Iwanoff’s buildings with a State Heritage listing.

When the house was bought by Jeavons’s brother Kyle in 2019, it was in bad shape and narrowly escaped demolition thanks toa last-minute heritage listing (the previous owners who were looking to sell the house heard that a potential buyer wanted to demolish it). The heritage listing meant the exterior of the house couldn’t be altered, but an unsympathetic 1980s internal renovation was able to be reversed. There were also some serious structural issues that needed to be addressed, with huge leaks throughout the building, as well as concrete cancer, significant rust and failed services. “It was in a very poor state,” says Jeavons.

“When the house was for sale, I went and had a look at it with Kyle,” continues Jeavons. “As I walked around the building, I was thinking, ‘What the hell is he taking on here?’ It was just such a bizarre project. But I did some initial schemes and costings for how we could get the house out of disrepair and turn it into a fully functional family home before Kyle bought it.”

“It was about being sympathetic to what was already there and letting that stand out.”

Jen Lowe was engaged for the design of the interiors. “One of the really big things that we worked together to resolve at the outset was on the upper level,” says Lowe. “The first floor originally had four bedrooms with a balcony along the edge of the bedrooms looking out to the ocean. In the 1980s renovation, they essentially enclosed the two middle bedrooms, which became internal rooms. The big problem from my perspective was to not put too much of my own stamp on this building. I didn’t want to try and ‘do an Iwanoff’, if you like. It was about being sympathetic to what was already there and letting that stand out.”

Tomich House garnered a significant amount of attention given its unusual design. Jeavons and Lowe relied on archival photographs and early descriptions of the house to try and get the building back to what it originally was. “We did what we could to retain whatever was possible, and all of the new materials we used were selected through a long process of research into what had been in the house,” says Lowe. “We also looked at a lot of other houses that were built in that time in the same area.” Jeavons adds that “Kyle’s purchase prompted a comprehensive restoration to align it with the original intent of being a functional, coastal family home.”

Tomich House garnered a significant amount of attention given its unusual design.

Iwanoff and his wife Dietlinde emigrated to Australia as refugees in 1950. He was trained as an architect and engineer in Munich before moving to Perth, but Iwanoff’s qualifications weren’t recognised, so he worked as a draftsman until he was able to be registered as an architect in 1963. Although he didn’t establish his own practice, The Studio of Iwanoff, until then, he designed his first house in 1954 in Claremont, known as Jordanoff House.

Architectural photographer Jack Lovel lived in Jordanoff House until he was six years old and says that growing up in that house had an integral influence on him. In 2021, Lovel published a book, Catching Light: The Architecture of Iwan Iwanoff, a five-year passion project in which he documented 24 of Iwanoff’s buildings.

Iwanoff’s work was unique in style and drew on his European training. He was influenced by the modernists of the 1920s and1930s but evolved it into a distinctly Australian style.

Iwanoff’s work was unique in style and drew on his European training. He was influenced by the modernists of the 1920s and 1930s but evolved it into a distinctly Australian style. “Iwanoff used materials that you would not necessarily see in a lot of residential projects, like concrete blocks, and he used them in an artistic way to bring light into the houses in the winter and then also protect them from the heat in summer,” says Lovel.

Despite his original architectural style, Iwanoff wasn’t widely recognised outside of Western Australia until recently. Unlike his contemporaries Harry Seidler and Robin Boyd, who were based in Sydney and Melbourne respectively, he never attained national prominence. In part, the relative isolation of Perth kept him a secret. “Architects then were very location-specific,” says Lovel. “He was very much left to his own devices in a way.” If Iwanoff had ended up in Sydney or Melbourne, his work would have no doubt been very different given its response to the harsh climate of Western Australia.

“Iwanoff is to Perth what Gaudi is to Barcelona – a figure inseparable from the place he worked and helped give identity to.”

In the introduction of Lovel’s book, architect Stuart Harrison goes even further and writes that “Iwanoff is to Perth what Gaudi is to Barcelona – a figure inseparable from the place he worked and helped give identity to.”

Architecture by Mark Jeavons Architect. Interior design by Ohlo Studio. Build by Assemble Building Co. Landscape design by See Design Studio. Mechanical installation by Admiral Mechanical Services. Mechanical engineering by Link Engineering Consultants. Structural engineering by Forth. Joinery by Handwerk. Stone by Bernini Stone & Tiles. Furniture manufacturing by Remington Matters. Artwork by Merrick Belyea, Jo Darbyshire, Olive Gill-Hille, Jordy Hewitt, Anna Louise Richardson, Matt Thomas and Paul Uhlman.