FOR Andy Zubowicz, it all started with a house that was about to blow up.

It was 1987 and Freo was bustling with America’s Cup fever as Mr Zubowicz found himself wandering around South Fremantle, when an abandoned house on Thomas Street caught his eye.

There was just one problem.

“I smelled gas, so I discovered that the place I was interested in is about to blow up,” he says.

The gas was gushing from a hotplate inside the house, so he tapped a stick in with a brick and decided the situation was under control.

He made an offer.

That house, since renovated and extended, became one of the earliest expressions of a style that would make Zubowicz one of Fremantle’s most distinctive designer-builders. A recent sale description of the property identifies its “subtle gothic aesthetics”, exposed brick and limestone, leadlight and a rooftop turret as signature Zubowicz touches.

Signature style

But back in 1987, there was no signature style.

There was just a young roofer looking for ways to build things cheaply.

“I was a roofy, so I was doing all these people roofs, but I was more excited about doing houses.”

Fremantle hadn’t hit its gentrification stage, and many of its old homes were showing their age. But a small band of local enthusiasts saw the potential and were beginning to give them a spruce up, with demolition sites providing a treasure trove of materials.

Mr Zubowicz would drive around looking for them.

“Somebody was digging a trench, for example for the gas line, and they were breaking the limestone with the rock breaker and the stuff was scattered around. At 4pm they knocked off, so I’d go in my Toyota Dyna – a1968, one of the first Toyota Dynas – loaded up, and it was my next day’s work.”

Jarrah flooring was another favourite, and much of the heritage that disappeared as Mosman Park modernised ended up on the floors of Fremantle.

Scavenger hunt

His approach was part scavenger hunt, part building apprenticeship: use whatever could be salvaged, learn whatever needed learning, and build the next house.

At 20 Scott Street, he demolished an existing house and designed a new one around a large undercroft, where he could store his tools.

“I was still toying with the idea that I’ve been a multi-trade specialist, and I will do anything,” he says.

That included swimming pools, where he picked up the necessary skills simply watching a guy working on a pool a few doors down.

The houses became increasingly ambitious, and so did the ideas behind them.

Mr Zubowicz traces much of his architectural imagination to Poland, where he grew up surrounded by the remains of mediaeval castles. A childhood visit to Malbork Castle made a particularly deep impression.

Inside the castle was a vast room with Gothic windows and cobalt-blue stained glass.

“That room was just magical, and then I said, ‘one day I just wish that I can create something which can make this level of impression on other people’.”

That ambition has remained remarkably consistent.

His buildings often combine recycled brick, local limestone, steel, concrete and deliberately old-fashioned references – castles, churches, towers, turrets and Gothic forms – but underneath the theatricality is an intensely practical builder’s mind.

“I was always about the numbers, build faster and build more. Don’t worry about the profit line margin or whatever. Just as long as you keep on producing them.”

Electric Whale

He developed his own construction techniques, including steel-based solutions for floors, roofs and staircases, allowing him to build elements that otherwise required several tradesmen.

The result was architecture that looked as though it had been assembled from fragments of several centuries.

The most spectacular example may be the “Electric Whale” at 1 South Street, where a fascination with Fremantle’s old power station collided with an encounter with a dead whale on a Margaret River beach.

Mr Zubowicz imagined a building that combined the soaring industrial void of the power station with the skeleton of a whale.

“I merged with this idea of a whale, and I built like an elevator shaft, and I have a staircase wrapped around the elevator shaft, and I plonk it on the vertebrae and ribs of a whale rib cage, and that will be just a marriage made in heaven.”

The building became a local curiosity and another chapter in a body of work that has made Zubowicz’s houses instantly recognisable.

He has continued to push the idea of what a suburban house can be, including the house now for sale at 195A Clontarf Road, Hamilton Hill.

The four-bedroom, four-bathroom house is being marketed as a “Suburban Castle”, with recycled brick, limestone, multiple living areas, two loft suites and a lap pool.

But Mr Zubowicz sees it less as a collection of features than as a journey.

“It sits in its own category. It’s all about the vertical element.”

The staircase is particularly important. Originally positioned differently, Mr Zubowicz rebuilt it so that the climb gradually reveals the western outlook.

“The draw is that you know that’s west, and you know the ocean is over there.”

He wanted the movement through the house to become part of the experience.

“You go step by step, step by step until you go to the top, and then you get your answer.

“The house is a dialogue with the buyer,” he says.