Revisited: Beddison Swift House, 1963

Multigenerational living has, in recent years, been touted as a solution for many of Australia’s housing woes, from the affordability crisis to aged care. But this type of living arrangement is nothing new. It is common practice in many cultures for two or more generations to live together, and the ubiquity of the granny flat would suggest that, in Australia, it was once more common than it is now.

The three-generation Beddison/Swift family may not have set out to create an architectural exemplar of multigenerational living with their adjoining homes in Melbourne’s leafy Ivanhoe, completed in 1962, but their understated and unassuming house has endured, remaining largely unchanged for more than half a century. The house is also among very few designed by Guilford Bell and Neil Clerehan – two powerhouses of mid-century domestic architecture – during their short-lived partnership.

The two attached yet separate dwellings are well designed for multi-generational living.

The two attached yet separate dwellings are well designed for multi-generational living.

Image: Tom Ross

Located on a sloping block and sensitively placed to avoid disturbing the site’s mature gums, the Beddison Swift House consists of a single-storey dwelling at the front of the block for the Beddisons, who were the grandparents of the family, and a double-storey home further down the slope for the Swifts and their young children. The dwellings are each simple, rectilinear forms made of besser blocks that recede quietly into the green landscape of Darebin Creek.

Gary Swift, who grew up in the house, remembers that his parents and grandparents had pooled their financial resources to purchase the land in order to build their respective homes together.

“My parents’ original house was a Robin Boyd house, designed and built at a time when Boyd was still a young man,” he says. “They were very keen on mid-century minimalist architecture and interior design, and their original house was very much that.

“My mother was keen to employ Boyd again but my grandmother, who was a force to be reckoned with, felt that Robin Boyd was a bit too outrageous. The compromise was someone who was of the same philosophy but perhaps a little more restrained in their approach.”

Simple joinery reveals the clients’ desire for a restrained, modernist aesthetic.

Simple joinery reveals the clients’ desire for a restrained, modernist aesthetic.

Image: Tom Ross

How the families came to Guilford Bell and Neil Clerehan’s practice is unknown. When the architects joined forces in early 1962, Neil had just left his directorship of the RVIA Small Homes Service. Len Hayball, who worked in their office as an architectural assistant, said the two architects tended to work independently and had their own clients. “There was a distinct difference between the design of the two architects,” he says. The Beddison Swift House, in his recollection, “was mainly Neil’s work.” Indeed, Gary remembers seeing Neil at the house on a regular basis.

Guilford’s influence can be detected in the front facade of the Beddisons’ residence. Both bedrooms of the house look out onto the front garden and hence each was fitted with full-height double French doors. Curiously, the bathroom in the middle was also fitted with the same French doors for the sake of symmetry. “Guilford had a more Palladian interest in formal symmetry, [whereas] Neil did not have the same formal approach,” Len recalls. “They would talk about projects, but not a great deal. I think they would [have] influenced each other.”

French doors in the bathroom of the smaller dwelling were fitted to achieve symmetry on the facade.

French doors in the bathroom of the smaller dwelling were fitted to achieve symmetry on the facade.

Image: 5968

The two homes, though joined together, allowed each family to live separate, independent lives. “As children, my sister and I would spend time with our grandparents,” Gary remembers. “It didn’t really feel like they were living with us, it felt like they were next door.

“There was a thing in the middle of the adjoining wall, which got named ‘the hatch.’ There were doors on both sides so you could open the hatch from either building and inside there were two telephone points so if anybody went out the phone could be unplugged and moved into the hatch and therefore it could be answered by either household.

“My grandfather passed away, ultimately, and my grandmother lived on for many years. My mother would cook meals and they would be put into the hatch and everybody would migrate into my grandmother’s place to have dinner with her. We did that for a very long time. In terms of independence, I think it worked very, very well.”

A hatch located in a shared wall enabled the family to answer one another’s phones or pass meals back and forth.

A hatch located in a shared wall enabled the family to answer one another’s phones or pass meals back and forth.

Image: Tom Ross

The kitchens in the house also had curious devices, such as pull-out flour bins and cutting boards. According to Len, this highly detailed joinery was a particular interest of Neil’s.

“Neil was quite influenced by Roy Grounds and his houses and apartments of the 1940s – Grounds had all sorts of interesting joinery devices and I think Neil was very impressed by that,” Len said. “He loved gadgets so he was always designing gadgets into kitchens and bathrooms wherever necessary.”

Neil’s interest in joinery would have married well with that of his clients. Gary’s grandfather was a trained cabinet-maker who went on to manufacturer wooden icecream sticks and spoons, and doctors’ tongue depressors. “I don’t think he was physically involved in the making of the fitout,” Gary says, “but I suspect he was of some influence. A lot of their furniture was his own work.”

In the kitchen, built-in flour bins and chopping boards reveal Neil Clerehan’s love for joinery details.

In the kitchen, built-in flour bins and chopping boards reveal Neil Clerehan’s love for joinery details.

Image: Tom Ross

The Beddison Swift House may be one of the earliest examples of an architect-designed multigenerational home. Coincidentally, in a nearby street is Robin Boyd’s seminal Featherston House, completed in 1969, which also had an adjoining grandparents’ residence. The Featherston House today continues to be a multigenerational home.

While the Beddisons and Swifts no longer live in the house that they built together, a new family has moved in who plan to join the two dwellings together to create one larger house with minimal intervention – a testament to the longevity and flexibility of the design from the two modernist masters.

Guilford and Neil’s partnership fell apart two years after they came together, in the same year that their very first project in partnership, Simon House in Mount Eliza, won the prestigious Victorian Architecture Medal. One can only speculate about what the two could have produced together had their partnership endured as well as even some of their more understated works.

Source

Project

Published online: 26 Nov 2021
Words: Linda Cheng
Images: 5968, Tom Ross

Issue

Houses, October 2021

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