Mitchell House (former)

The former Mitchell House at 2 Salford Avenue, Balwyn, designed by Polish emigre architect Taddeusz “Tad” Karasinski in 1963-64, is significant. Elements that contribute to the significance of the place include: 
• original built form including original C-shaped footprint 
• internal courtyard 
• flat roof with integrated A-framed roof 
• walls of brown brick 
• original pattern of fenestrations, door openings and timber window joinery • open carport that is angled to follow the line of the street. 

While it is unclear, if any of the Ellis Stone landscaping to the central courtyard survives, the use of crazy paving (both externally and internally) is consistent with landscape trends at the time and enhances the setting of the place. 

The rear additions to the house made in 1967 and 1974 are not significant.

The house is of local historical and aesthetic significance to the City of Boroondara.

2 Salford Avenue, Balwyn, is of local historical significance for the evidence it provides of Boroondara as a locus for leading architect-designed public and private buildings from the 1850s into the Post-war period. Built in 1963-64 to a design by Polish-born émigré architect Taddeusz Karasinski, the house displays a highly innovative and provocative design which seamlessly integrates an A-framed music room into the principal façade of what is otherwise a finely executed Modernist house. The house exemplifies the high concentration of architect designed modernist houses built in Balwyn and Balwyn North during the 1950s and 1960s. (Criterion A) 2 Salford Avenue, Balwyn is of aesthetic significance as one of the more remarkable and striking 1960s houses in Boroondara. Commissioned by a client of German origin, it was designed (at the client’s request) to reflect ‘German influences’ – both the prevailing Modernist style derived from the Bauhaus (shown by the flat-roof, broad expanse of brickwork, extensive glazing and courtyard plan) and traditional vernacular housing of regional and alpine areas (shown by the A-framed roof). The unusual brief resulted in a confidently realised design by architect Tad Karasinski, who had studied and worked as an architect in Germany in the 1940s. With its unusual facade skilfully integrating a low flat roof with angled carport and the prominent A-frame at one end, the house is an eye-catching element in the streetscape. (Criterion E)