Dunstan Residence

The Dunstan Residence at 17 Yandilla Street, Balwyn, designed by Robin Boyd in 1949-50 and built in three stage (1950,1951 and 1963, is significant. Elements that contribute to significance of the place include: • Its 1950, 1951 and 1963 built form and low gabled roof • elongated and slightly irregular rectilinear plan, which is stepped to follow the topography of the site • pattern of fenestrations and door openings including window walls expressed in half- or full-height bays of small rectangular panes • the 1950 chimney. Significance of the place is enhanced by its setting which includes a substantial garden to the west and the low stepped front fence.

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

17 Yandilla Street, Balwyn, is of local historical significance for the evidence it provides of Boroondara as a locus for fine, public and private buildings from the 1850s into the Post-war period that were designed by leading architects. Designed by noted Melbourne based architect, critic and educator, Robin Boyd in 1949-50 and built in three stages in 1950, 1951 and 1963, Boyd designed this house early in his career just after completing his own home in Riversdale Road. Boyd has incorporated many similar features within both houses including an open, site-responsive split-level plan and extensive walls of glazing, elements that would be much copied by other architects in the coming decades. Profiled in popular home magazine Australian House & Garden, in 1951, the house exemplifies the large concentration of architect-designed Modernist houses built in Balwyn and Balwyn North during the 1950s and 1960s. (Criterion A) 17 Yandilla Street, Balwyn is of aesthetic significance as a notable achievement in modern homebuilding at a time when materials and labour were still scarce due to wartime restrictions. In the face of such limitations, Boyd introduced the idea of a regional interpretation of modern architecture that he first discussed in his influential 1947 publication Victorian Modern. Included in his basic ideas, as evidenced by this house, where such concepts as open-planning, split-levels and vast areas of glazing or window walls. These were extremely innovative concepts at the time 17 Yandilla Street was built and became deign principals that would recur throughout Boyd's own subsequent career and be widely adopted by many architects working in the 1950s and 1960s. (Criterion E) 17 Yandilla Street, Balwyn has associative significance as an early and notably intact example of the work of the eminent designer and writer Robin Boyd. Documented in late 1948 and built in 1949-50, the house was one of the first projects undertaken by Boyd when he left the partnership of Kevin Pethebridge and Frank Bell to open his own sole practice. Today, it remains as one of relatively few surviving examples from this seminal phase of Boyd's career, prior to his celebrated partnership with Roy Grounds and Frederick Romberg. Along with the Gillison House in Kireep Road, Balwyn (1951) and the Wood House in Tannock Street, Balwyn North (1950), it is one of three outstanding early and substantially intact houses by Robin Boyd in the Balwyn/Balwyn North area, which, considered collectively, provide rare and valuable evidence of the innovation, boldness and fresh design approaches of a young architect on the cusp of an illustrious career. (Criterion H)