Guilford Bell's last design, in outer Melbourne, listed
The last home to be designed by the Australian Modernist architect Guilford Bell has been listed for sale with $3.5 million-plus hopes.
It's a 1986 house on a 2.5-hectare block at Officer, minutes from Beaconsfield and Old Berwick, 50 kilometres south-east of Melbourne.
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The Grant House, also called Whiteside, was built in 1986 for Robert Grant and his partner who ran the popular City Gardener garden supplies business in Melbourne for many years. The property was previously an apple and pear orchard owned by Grant's family.
The sloping land framed by cypress hedges was the site for the home designed by Guilford Bell at the age of 74, and credited as his last major residential work.
The 26-36 Whiteside Road house is a snow-white pavillion style abode comes with its pyramidal, sky-pointing roof with Buddhist shrine or carnival marquee appearance.
The late respected architect Guilford Bell's status among well-to-do clients has triggered a National Trust-listing. Bell died in 1992.
The grounds have a pool and series of landscaped gardens – a cherry tree walk, a summer glade and sunken parterre, and terraces of white irises along with lawns and lotus-filled dam, towering cypress hedges, and white wisteria-covered arbour.
There are views to the Gippsland Ranges.
The house is clad in a corrugated Zincalume along with a second corrugated-steel structure to accommodate a three-car garage and a fully serviced cottage.
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The other dominant feature is the use of 130,000 bricks within the house precinct and garden terraces, which took a local brickie almost two years to lay.
Its listing agent is Malcolm Graham of Alex Scott & Staff Berwick.
It was briefly listed for sale in 2007 with $2 million-plus hopes when its zoning was yet to upgraded to its current Growth Corridor zoning for residential development.
"The privacy and peaceful surrounds of this site has a wow effect, which opens ones mind to the ongoing potential as only half the site is improved of this quality investment," its marketing material says.
The holding cost $36,000 in 1976.