The state-heritage-listed flat where Australian modernist architect Sir Roy Grounds resided in Toorak has been listed for sale.
Located at 24 Hill Street, the flat is one of five units collectively known as the Hill Street Flats. The front unit, designed by Grounds for his family, is renowned for being a bold geometric experiment. At its centre lies a fully glazed, open-to-the-sky circular courtyard within a perfectly square building footprint, with every room oriented toward this central space.
The flats behind the front unit lack the precise geometric layout of Grounds’s residence, but still feature distinctive elements such as angled car park walls, small slatted balconies and double-height main living spaces.
At the time the Grounds family purchased the Hill Street property, Grounds had completed the Four Flats projects: Clendon, Quamby, Clendon Corner and Moonbria, all located in either Armadale or Toorak and completed between 1940–1941. An original scheme for the Hill Street Flats from 1952 featured a single-storey home for the Grounds family with 12 flats behind it. In 1953, that plan was modified to comprise five flats – a configuration that remains today.
The same year Grounds revised the scheme, he joined architects Frederick Romberg and Robin Boyd in establishing Grounds Romberg and Boyd, an architectural practice that operated until its dissolution in 1962. The partnership dissolved partly in response to Grounds’s appointment as sole architect for the National Gallery of Victoria – a building that echoed many of the themes found in the Hill Street flat, built a decade earlier. A newly published book by Maria Larkins explores the famed practice in depth, tracing how it operated and how it ultimately all came undone.
In another recent book, Roy Grounds: Experiments in Minimum Living by architect and historian Tony Lee, it’s noted that Roy and his wife Betty Grounds lived in the Hill Street house until his death in 1981. The home continues to be recognised and “celebrated as one of Australia’s most outstanding modernist houses. Grounds’ later projects, both residential and civic, including the Australian Academy of Science (1957) and the National Gallery of Victoria (1959) replicate details from these five flats, confirming his pattern of incremental design,” commented Lee.
In its statement of significance, the Victorian Heritage Database describes the home as “inward looking” and possessing “an almost eastern character,” expressed through its projecting eaves and the central courtyard, which was originally planted with bamboo. The database further characterised the house as “a striking essay in pure geometry, a hallmark of Ground’s work during the 1950s, and one of the best examples of experimentation with geometry in the work of post war avant-garde architects in Victoria.”
For more stories on the architecture of Roy Grounds, explore the Revisited articles on Moonbria and Boyd Baker House, or read these features chronicling the history of the National Gallery of Victoria, published in honour of its fiftieth anniversary, and the Arts Centre Melbourne, marking 40 years since its completion.
Expressions of interest for Grounds House are now being accepted. For details, visit here.
Source: Architecture - architectureau
