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Mann House (former)
Location39 INVERNESS WAY BALWYN NORTH, BOROONDARA CITY LevelIncluded in Heritage Overlay |
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Statement of Significance
What is significant?
The former Mann House at 39 Inverness Way, Balwyn North, built to a design by architect Neil Montgomery of Montgomery, King & Trengrove in 1954, is significant. Significant fabric includes:
- two storey built form expressed as a rectilinear box like volume raised above a full width void
- h-shaped plan centred around an entry/circulation core
- internal courtyard spaces
- open carport, louvred timber screen, and vertical timber clad wall at its end
- stone clad wing wall that bisects the open underneath void and projects toward the street
- recessed upper balconies and external stair
- discretely-articulated windows and mullions
- spandrel and balustrade panels of deep blue tinted colourback glass.
- timber flagstaff (corner post of recessed deck).
Although the early low stone retaining wall and letter box have been rendered these still contribute to the significance of the place as they maintain the original open garden layout design and low form of the front fence.
How is it significant?
The house is of historical and aesthetic significance to the City of Boroondara.
Why is it significant?
39 Inverness Way, Balwyn North, is of local historical significance for the evidence it provides of Boroondara as a locus for fine, leading architect-designed public and private buildings from the 1850s into the Post-war period. Designed in 1954 by Neil Montgomery of prominent architects Montgomery, King & Trengove, this house is the first private residential project that the architects undertook after establishing their practice in 1953. Featured in popular (including the Argus) and architectural media, (the RAIA’s slender 1956 architectural guidebook published for the overseas and interstate visitors to the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne), the house was widely commented on and exemplifies the high concentration of architect designed modernist houses built in Balwyn and Balwyn North during the 1950s and 60s. (Criterion A)
39 Inverness Way, Balwyn North is of aesthetic significance as a notable example of a house designed in the International Modernist style. The house, cut from a cube, has a striking architectural composition, with its raised first floor expressing apparent weightlessness, bold Mondrian-style fenestration and internal courtyards epitomises modernism’s stylish departure from Post-war vernacular houses of brick veneer and hipped terracotta tiled roofs. The house reflects the early work of Harry Seidler and faithfully displays the design language taught to Seidler by teachers Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. (Criterion E)
39 Inverness Way, Balwyn North is of aesthetic significance as a notable example of a house designed in the International Modernist style. The house, cut from a cube, has a striking architectural composition, with its raised first floor expressing apparent weightlessness, bold Mondrian-style fenestration and internal courtyards epitomises modernism’s stylish departure from Post-war vernacular houses of brick veneer and hipped terracotta tiled roofs. The house reflects the early work of Harry Seidler and faithfully displays the design language taught to Seidler by teachers Walter Gropius and Marcel Breuer at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. (Criterion E)
Group
Residential buildings (private)
Category
House