There's No Place Like A Home With All The Style Of The '50s
The Age
Sunday October 13, 1996
DRIVING along the quiet streets of Ivanhoe, a squat little building made almost entirely of glass stands out from the traditional two-storey family homes. Stop the car to look. Wide white venetian blinds, bamboo wall paper and tea-tree bark fencing. A pale blue Chrysler station wagon is parked in the carport.
It's a marvel from the 1950s. A little home with outdoor entertaining areas, split levels, generous open-plan living area, glass walls and crazy colored kitchen cabinets. To some, the house is nothing a good bulldozer couldn't sort out. To others, it's a gem worthy of classification.
Prices are beginning to jump as younger buyers snap up 1950s fantasy homes and flats in Ivanhoe, Brighton, Kew, Caulfield and Balwyn.
"Homes built in the '50s are really fun, with lots of light and great colors. People just have to learn to love them," says architecture writer and '50s enthusiast Stephen Crafti.
Crafti conducts specialist bus tours around Ivanhoe, Balwyn and Kew teaching architects, real estate agents and designers the enormous value of the period. Homes full of boomerang tables, butterfly chairs, chunky rockeries, cork floors and ornamental ponds have opened their door to the tours.
"The homes are not pretty. But they are functional and totally experimental. They are just misunderstood. Real estate agents just refer to them as land. Most hate them so much they recommend knocking them down," Crafti says.
Architect Norman Day, an expert in the period, says the public expected a new world to emerge from the embers of the war between 1947 and 1956. Everything had to be modern. Modern architecture, modern design, modern colors.
Publications like Home Beautiful supported new architects developing the style Day calls "heroic Melbourne". Architects returning from the war had picked up skills from the American army in New Guinea, including bridge-building and the use of lightweight concrete structures.
These architects teamed up with younger students working with the charismatic Sir Roy Grounds, designer of the National Gallery of Victoria, at the University of Melbourne.
The introduction of color cinema and Thai silks also led to an explosion of experimental design. The finest work was produced by architects, including John and Phyllis Murphy, Peter McIntyre, Neil Clerehan and Robin Boyd.
"It was a very avant-garde period, with each home conceived as an exclusive work of art. There was no thought of mass production or banging them out," says Day.
After the war, Australia had a shortage of 400,000 houses. Day notes in his book Heroic Melbourne that the leading architect Robin Boyd was among those who felt the profession should contribute to providing housing for the masses.
Boyd took on the role of director of The Age Small Homes Service, writing a weekly article about architecture and providing an affordable modern house plan drawn up by one of Boyd's colleagues.
The result was hundreds of houses built in simple, affordable modern styles in growth areas such as Beaumaris, Chelsea and Sandringham.
"Interest is growing around the world in bright colors, textures and smells of different materials," says Day.
Brett Gamon, director of Chisholm and Gamon Real Estate in Elwood, says some '50s houses in Kew sell for about $400,000 while smaller homes in Caulfield and Beaumaris fetch between $180,000 and $250,000.
"The Edwardian and Victorian period homes are still the most sought after for their ornate workmanship. The '50s and '60s homes are a much plainer style but they are very thoughtful. You can actually sit in a room and read a book without having to turn a light on," he says.
He says many '50s homes are still being bulldozed for their land value in more affluent areas like Kew and Caulfield. "People just don't recognise the value of these houses. These buildings were full of creative, bold optimism. People don't know what they are looking at."
* For more information on '50s architecture and design, contact Stephen Crafti on 9859 9760. Norman Day's book 'Heroic Melbourne' is available at the RMIT bookshop.
© 1996 The Age
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