The Former Salter House

In his 1964 book on Walter Burley Griffin, AIA Gold Medal Winner and Author James Birrell stated that:
"The Salter House by Walter Burley Griffin is more important to the development of Australian domestic architecture than any other house in the country.”

‘Burley’, also known as ‘Salter House’, designed by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin (proteges of Frank Lloyd Wright) in 1922 and built in 1926 for Stanley R Salter, is a single storey family home with seven room bays that intersect and are centred around a sunlit open courtyard.

The main rooms have tent-like ceilings under low pitched, deep triangular extended gable roofs.

The later additions from the early 1960s are low skillions containing wet areas and service rooms.

The house itself was sited high on its original block because of a diagonal drainage easement that ran across the site.

The house was built in a patented concrete masonry system known as ‘Knitlock’ devised by Griffin in 1917.

This modular cladding and construction system, based on a 3 foot 6 inch or (1.060m) module with vertical ribs in the wall system at each module, was intended as an expedient and inexpensive way of building dwellings.

A series of fixed and operable timber framed casement windows and doors with chevron patterned glazing bars infill the wall openings.

The Glyndebourne Avenue house is one of 80 projects completed by Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin during their twenty years in Australia.

The Griffins designed and built five ‘Knitlock’ houses in Woodend and Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs, in addition to their own one-room knitlock cottage, Pholiota, in Heidelberg. Salter house is one of only three remaining in the state.

The present owners bought the property in January 2018.

The brief was to allow the house to reveal itself through its unique structure, materiality and context.

This involved room by room removal and revealing of the layers that had been laid over the project during previous unconsidered renovations.

Joinery interventions are simple and sit within the datum lines of the horizontal internal timber fretwork and existing wall openings.

The two existing bathrooms were updated with the addition of a robe space for the larger sleeping area.
Technologies, services and fittings were incorporated or updated without compromising the heritage fabric of the house.

The project required engagement with highly respected structural engineers and a well-chosen builder in its repair and conservation.

Careful curation of colour and tone of the walls, floors and windows underscore the philosophy of doing only what is necessary and retaining as much as possible of the Griffins’ original intention.

The objective of embedding the house in an indigenous landscape was deftly achieved by landscaper Sam Cox and his team.
Non-native plantings and inappropriate hard landscape elements were removed, and the in-ground pool was converted into a 27,000 litre water reservoir.

This project is a realization of the Griffins’ forward-thinking vision of the home, which they saw as a place for reflection and engagement with the surrounding environment. Salter House once again sits in a natural setting, inside and outside blending together in harmony as was their original intention.