Advertised 60 years ago as close to the beach and the bush,Graeme Bell’s mid-century modern home Alexander House in Avalon looks as fresh as its perky butterfly roof.
It is lucky it wasn’t knocked down and replaced by a Hamptons-style McMansion,the fate of many other homes from this era,said Bell,the owner of Trace Architects.
Designed by architect Loyal Alexander,it was brought back from the brink of demolition by Bell,who opted to restore instead of raze the home on a large block advertised as a “development opportunity”.
Bell is among the dozens of residents on the northern beaches who have submitted houses,apartments and commercial buildings to anew study by Northern Beaches Council of mid-century and modern architecture up to the late 1970s that could lead to heritage-listing protection.
In its request for submissions,the council says architecture from the Victorian,Federation and inter-war eras were generally well understood by the community and represented on heritage registers. “Modern architecture is not,” it said.
Local historian and resident Robert Mackinnon,secretary of the Palm Beach and Whale Beach Association Inc,said the peninsula had the most mid-century architecture of anywhere in Australia,yet very little was heritage listed.
“There’s very little[heritage listed] from the 1950s,’60s and ’70s,” said Mackinnon,who lives in a modern home in Palm Beach that had been held together by termites when he bought it. “I think you’ll find there’s probably a greater penetration on the northern beaches than any other place I dare to think of in Australia. They’re everywhere.”
Nearly 60 big-name architects had worked and often lived in the area over the past 100 years,he said. They were attracted by moneyed clients,and the challenging and interesting topography and its surroundings with bush on one side and the beach on the other. These architects include Bruce Rickard,Harry Seidler,Glenn Murcutt,Peter Muller,Richard Leplastrier and Belinda Koopman.