Suiting The Jetsons: Apollo Gate, the 1970s Cronulla spaceship house listing
The Bang & Olufsen house in Point Piper has been snapped up, so attention has now turned to the futuristic Apollo Gate, the Sutherland Shire's latest waterfront listing.
It's the one nicknamed the Cronulla spaceship house, a reputation that dates back to its completion in the 1970s with its Reuben Lane design.
It has changed hands just the once in the past four decades - at $185,000 in 1978 when sold by the Breen family who owned the Metropolitan Sand Company at Cronulla.
It was bought by Evan Cardiacos, who was in the rug and floor covering trade, until his 2008 death.
The six-bedroom house is expected to fetch around $3.5 million through McGrath agent Steve Day.
"Unquestionably the region's most iconic waterfront home, Apollo Gate is a unique architectural masterpiece with spectacular views over Port Hacking to Bundeena and Jibbon Beach," Steve Day says.
"It is set on a blue chip, double block with direct access to Salmon Haul Bay."
Lane's bold design was motivated by spiritual and architectural links to Mediterranean villages with whitewashed buildings clinging to the coastlines.
It featured in NSW Builder magazine, the official journal of the Master Builders' Association, in May 1975 (pictured below). It was built by CH & CR Ellis with spiralling western red cedar ceiling.
Expressions of interest close May 18.
Reuben Lane, who died last year, was inspired by the work of his mentor Oscar Niemeyer, the architect of Brasilia.Over his life, according to his 2012 SMH obituary, he also met other architectural giants including Charles-Édouard Jeanneret-Gris, aka Le Corbusier and Philip Johnson, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright who asked him "how does it feel to be upside down?".
He was the son of a plasterboard manufacturer of homes in Sydney's southern suburbs. "The smell of the buildings got me in," he said. "I loved the smell of timber and concrete. I wanted to be the person who designed these buildings," he once said.
