ABSTRACT
58The first house that Boyd designed for his family is located in the suburb of Camberwell, just over 10 kilometres east from Melbourne’s city, on the west side of a ‘left-over’ wedge of land from the subdivision of some larger parkland originally incised by a creek. As a result, the site is confined behind the back of some adjacent sites and the house is ‘squeezed’ between their back fences and a gully of the creek that used to run from the parkland on the north. The house is further distanced from the west edge of the gully to avoid possible structural problems related to land erosion, and to comply with the municipal set-back regulations to neighbouring properties. Both its footprint and placement within the block are a direct response to the challenging existing conditions of the site. The outcome is a long and narrow building that is less than four metres wide along its entire length, with a “plan that is roughly the same as that of a railway train”. 1
