A search for Higgs boson pair production is performed with 19.5 fb of proton--proton collision data at 8 TeV, which were recorded by the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider in 2012. The decay products of each Higgs boson are reconstructed as a high-momentum system with either a pair of small-radius jets or a single large-radius jet, the latter exploiting jet substructure techniques and associated -tagged track-jets. No evidence for resonant or non-resonant Higgs boson pair production is observed. The data are interpreted in the context of the Randall--Sundrum model with a warped extra dimension as well as the two-Higgs-doublet model. An upper limit on the cross-section for of 3.2 (2.3) fb is set for a Kaluza--Klein graviton mass of 1.0 (1.5) TeV, at the 95\% confidence level. The search for non-resonant Standard Model production sets an observed 95\% confidence level upper limit on the production cross-section of 202 fb, compared to a SM prediction of fb.