A Most Beautiful Piece of Land – Peter McIntyre’s River House Block

Earth, Wind + Water

The River House place has a dreamlike quality to its winding tracks and rocky steps, it is a private world, an isolated sanctuary placed in the gentle suburb of Kew, Melbourne, in harmony with its dense canopy of trees and bushy seasonal plants and all the inhabitants who enjoy its protection.

A steep vertical cliff that has been sculptured to submit to habitation where nature intended none, suggesting this is a rare place working in effortless synergy with the rocks and earth, enjoying airstreams breezing through the trees and the Yarra River passing on its southern edges.

The site has a theatrical scope, even cinematic, because it appears to have been created as an architect’s dream rather than by surveyor’s prescription. Very few souls could have imagined what could become of a rocky outcrop placed at a river’s elbow, which appeared to be unliveable, unbuildable and therefore uninhabitable.

It embraces generations of the McIntyre family, who are predominantly architects, and their friends and colleagues who have gathered over the years to live, work and rest.

In the process of creating a settlement, this land informs McIntyre’s design strategies and architecture, which has been forged over the past half-century, the place illuminates a world of ideas like an encyclopaedia or thesaurus would. Such a challenging site confronted the architects to find its concealed beauty and in the process the site defined the architects.

At Kew, like other projects Peter McIntyre has designed – including Residential, Kyla Park, Dinner Plain, Mornington Sea House, and various ski huts in the Australian snow fields – there is a demonstration of a unique understanding of the complex relationship between site, topography, vegetation, weather and the opportunity on offer to a designer.

His designs appear easy and uncomplicated, but they contain innovative solutions to the complicated demands of the location. It could be that his love of the sea and sailing has heightened an ability to engineer a balance and harmony from what seems to be chaos and discord.

McIntyre has spent much of his life embracing the places that sit between land and water – professionally as an architect and at leisure as a yachtsman – but most significantly as a place for him and his family to settle.

Qualities manifest in McIntyre’s architecture are never more evident than at their spiritual home, the River House, Kew.

Individual buildings on the site reflect the concerns of the family who made this place and who have lived here since the mid-1900s. This McIntyre family’s focus has been on making structures that occupy an almost haptic cosiness with their place, like those of Italy’s cliff villages at the Amalfi Coast, which Peter McIntyre originally discovered during his travels there in 1960.

There is also a resonance in the scale of the settlement, like those of Cornwall (UK), where seaside villages like Polperro, Looe and St Just, have built houses up to the water’s edge, a small path between the two highlighting the horizon created between water and land, and there should be no surprise that what appears to be an impossible site for living on the side of a craggy rocky river escarpment in the Scottish tradition, is proven false.

The Yarra River at this location is subject to tidal movement and contains salt water from Port Phillip Bay which mixes with the groundwater provided by its upper reaches (the saltwater content is contained at Dights Falls, located about one kilometre upriver The site is just 5km from central Melbourne).

Fundamental is the ability of buildings to perch on a site not inherently suited for construction, like a craft in the sea. Looking out from the rooms of these houses and studios we become acquainted with the historic landscape through views into the trees and the landscape, with the winding Yarra River, and these vistas steer the eye to another panorama – the skyline of Melbourne city to the west. Perhaps that is a reminder, that the tranquillity of Kew comes about though hard work done in the city.

Early Settlement

The McIntyre settlement at Kew is located on an oxbow or horseshoe bend of the Yarra River.

They frequented the area where the Yarra River meets Merri Creek, just upriver from this site, and Dights Falls, a natural rapids forming a weir which offered them a river crossing and good fishing and they traded and talked while using the river as a food source.

John Buchan, the original Scottish settler who in 1872 built and lived in ‘Finhaven’ , a grand Victorian mansion located above the River House site, (later demolished in 1940).

Colonial Mansions + ‘Swinton’

In the mid-1800s, colonial settlers moved onto sites above the river, around what is known as Studley Park, where they built large Victorian mansions with expansive European styled gardens. They included ‘Mooroolbeek’, the former home of Sir Frank Madden in Madden Grove, the Syme family (owner of The Age newspaper) bought ‘Blythswood’ in 1882.

The group included the Barker’s house, ‘Rockingham’ (which was purchased by the Red Cross in 1940 and used as a rehabilitation hospital for returning servicemen before being demolished in 1966).

‘Finhaven’ was home to the Buchan family (real estate) since 1872 (later demolished in 1940). It was constructed on about three hectares of land with a Yarra river frontage nearing 150 metres, it was an impressive two-storey mansion in the neo-classical style, containing 16 rooms including a billiard room and ballroom. and it was named after a ruined castle which was located near Buchan’s childhood home in Scotland.

‘Swinton’ is located above the cliff top site almost as an appurtenance to it, and on relatively flat land, it is a Victorian villa located and the street it fronts, Swinton Avenue, which bares its name.

Swinton was owned and lived in by the painters Archie (Archibald) Colquhoun (b.1907 d.1986) and Millie (Amalie) Colquhoun (b.1894 d.1974)/ Archie was a disciple of Max Meldrum (b.1975 d.1955) and colleague of William Dargie (b.1912 d.2003).

McIntyre had expressed interest in the house because it contained a means of access from his cliff site to the suburban street network. His practice was busy preparing the Melbourne Strategy Plan, so he bought ‘Swinton’ and the family moved in on Christmas Eve, 1973. They then built a road from the locked blocks below to the roadway above, which released the river site from its difficult and sometimes dangerous point of access.

That move enabled the original block to maintain its connection with the suburban street network, while releasing it for future developments. ‘Swinton’ was sold in 1998 and Peter and Dione moved into the ‘Summerhouse’ in 1999, which held an address at 25 Swinton Avenue including car access retained for the whole site.

The Most Beautiful Piece of Land

McIntyre’s long lasting love affair for the site was consummated when he bought the piece of land perched on a precipitously hill where the Yarra turns a bend and the open grassed areas touch the bottom of a steeply rising forested hill.

As a child he had been associated with the Yarra for years, he grew up nearby and visited McCauley’s Boat Shed not far away.

At the bottom of Molesworth Street, Kew, he swam with his school mate, McCauley (child of the shed owners) in a manner that McIntyre compares with Huckleberry Finn. He would swim also under the Burke Road Bridge ‘beach’, a sandbar created under the old bridge which was in effect a beach on the river bank.

Aged 19 years, Peter McIntyre had unknowingly sourced his property which would gain value over the years as he added more dwellings, while also providing home and shelter for the family and accommodation for the architect’s practice. With the purchase, he set in place a creative opus, a huge opportunity for his architectural skills – and a strategy of creative and economic wizardry which would inspire, protect and enhance his family and professional life.

From his father’s office in 1947 he had been sent to Kew to survey the site and check the levels for future development. The client was a builder, Robert Scott, associated with the office, who planned to build a house on the land for his son.

McIntyre took his role as surveyor much further, he clambered down the hilly site to the Yarra, where he discovered, “the most beautiful piece of land and it fronted the river”. RPM. 2009

“That weekend I went out to the site and I had the dumpy level and I was doing a survey, counting the trees and going over it. It was the most marvellous day.”RPM.2009.

Where many people may have hoped, he decided to buy the land.

Purchase - ‘Finhaven’ + the Buchans

The next weekend he met with a real estate agent in Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn, named Mr Henry, who was an elderly and gentle man. He asked him whether he could buy it, who owned it and asked whether it was for sale.Mr Henry thought the land may be Crown land titled, meaning it was owned by the government and would not be available, but he promised to investigate, which he did before contacting McIntyre some six or seven weeks later.

He reported that the land was privately owned, previously part of the homestead ‘Finhaven’ which fronted Stevenson Street on the hill above. ‘Finhaven’ had been owned by the Buchan family, who’s patriarch was the land dealer, Scottish immigrant John Buchan (c.1808-1874).

His daughter-in-law Mrs John Innerarity Buchan had died during the War in 1942, leaving their children as co-owners, who had the old house demolished, and employed a surveyor, Tuckson, to provide subdivision plans for later sales.

Tuckson’s advice to the Buchan family was that the upper areas of the site were suited for subdivision, but the balance of the site was either too steeply sloped or subject to flooding from the Yarra River, and that area of the site was not included in the plans of subdivision.

McIntyre made an appointment to meet the elder Buchan, a lawyer with offices in Queen Street, Melbourne, who was Executor of the family Estate. Buchan was prepared to sell the land for £200Australian Pounds subject to the rest of his family agreeing. McIntyre agreed, although he did not actually have any funds available to pay.

A Near Gazump

His excitement at the pending purchase encouraged McIntyre to employ his surveying skills to map the land, its levels and the trees, where he was noticed by a neighbor who lived in the adjacent street of Finhaven Court.

They later met and shared a cup of tea when Peter explained his plans to purchase and live there, and they agreed there should be no reduction of the mature trees on site.

Next Monday, lawyer Buchan called McIntyre to announce that a gazump bid of £1,000Australian Pounds had been made for the same block McIntyre had been discussing with his neighbor, who, as it turns out, had wanted the block for some time, but for which he had previously offered only £10Australian Pounds.

Since the weekend he had visited his neighbours and told them of McIntyre’s plans, encouraging them as a group to raise more money to buy the land, and, by doing so, add value to their individual properties and achieve sites each with direct Yarra River frontages.

Buchan told McIntyre that he considered the action improper, but nevertheless he must again place the decision with his family.

An agonising month passed before he called McIntyre again. He met with Buchan at his city office, “He had that rusty wire with the lawyer’s names on the windows”. RPM.2009. announcing that the Buchans would sell, but that McIntyre must pay more – although still less than the neighbor’s bid. They agreed on a price of £300(AUS)Pounds.

“He looked at me. I was 19 years of age and he said “would you like time to pay?” I said, “I would”. He said, “what about six months” and I said “that is fine”. I must have had something for a deposit because I paid a deposit and I had six months to raise the rest. “ RPM. 2009

(Much later, around 1974-75, McIntyre was designing a housing subdivision on the coast east of Canberra, called Kyla Park.

Perspective purchasers would engage McIntyre, who would inspect and approve or guide them on their plans, as the design architect for all buildings in the gated community so a level of authenticity and character was maintained over the site.

One such purchaser was his neighbour from Finhaven Court, who chose not to meet with McIntyre, given their past. Nevertheless, the architect prevailed and invited him to visit him at Kew and to inspect the developments on the site.)

Fatherly Advice

Peter asked his father to look at the site, perhaps hoping for some financial assistance to buy, or maybe just an approval and support. He had made a huge commitment, alone, at 19 years, and he valued his father’s advice.

His father prohibited the purchase, not aware that young McIntyre had already signed a contract of sale. He told his son it was a crazy idea, too steep, no access, in fact it lacked any road at all, and, worse, it was subject to flooding. But it had to be paid for, and McIntyre was an unemployed student.

Of that time, McIntyre reflected, “At the beginning my father had prohibited me from buying the site, then people in cars and on the tram would stop at the bridge overlooking Kew, and laugh (at my folly).

Plans dating from the 1930s Depression to extend the Kew Boulevard along the banks of the Yarra River did not occur further than Walmer Street and a 1954 Planning Scheme for Melbourne showed the Boulevard extending to Hawthorn.

……….and now I find the house is Heritage listed by the council.…..the River House ….has been central to my life……but symptomatic also of the reasons why I had no clients in the late 1950s”.

RPM.2009

His tutor, architect Robin Boyd, was managing The Age Small Homes Service, which supplied at low cost new designs for houses which would be built as part of post War construction. McIntyre would prepare perspectives, amending working drawings and providing small construction drawings for the service, while continuing with his architecture course at the same time.

He raised some money in the process, but his parents discovered what he was doing when he became ill from overworking. His father reluctantly offered to assist with the balance of money required to buy the land – on the condition that young McIntyre work in his office again to repay the loan.

Nature’s Scenery

Trees + Vegetation

(From notes supplied by Dione McIntyre): Over time the river has changed its course and moved towards the south leaving an original river bed which floods after heavy rains and a rocky escarpment which was the original river bank. In the circumstances, the land was considered by the majority of people to be unsuited for habitation other than grazing cows and a few horses.

A levee bank was built against the river to reduce flooding which was bookended by two large English oak (quercus robur) trees, one at the river bend used as shelter by the cows and another at the west end. One tree still has a steel scratching plate fitted and the lower branches had been shaped as a horizontal canopy by the animals.

Where Finhaven had been, tall conifers and indigenous gum trees (eucalyptus camaldulensis, eucalyptus mannifera, eucalyptus x studleyensis and eucalyptus melliodora) had been planted as windbreaks, at the eastern end of the site is a large Plane tree (plantus.sp.) along with a copse of elms (ulmus procera) which had formed from suckers at the east end of the site. A row of cottonwoods (populous sp.) lines the Hodgson Street boundary.

Hawthorn (crataegus monogyna) had been used as fencing but are less in evidence now and weeping willows (salix sp.) which once lined the river were removed by the authoritative MMBW in the 1960s.

On ground, English ivy (hedera helix) is the predominant cover (found on the hillside among the elm suckers), and where blackberry brambles (rubus sp.) once grew and rabbits bred, a swimming pool rests.

(List of plant species attached).

Earthworks

The site needed a means of access, to allow entry and for future construction. It was essentially the side of a hill leading down to a river which would flood unpredictably.

McIntyre set about sourcing soil as fill from any building site he could find. By 1957 he found enough to construct an entry ramp which became an internal roadway between Hodgson Street and the River house, then hired a bulldozer to create an earth track to the lower levels of the site and Bartolomeo Paoli was employed for outside work until 1975.

(Notes supplied by Dione McIntyre): In 1957 a white painted post-and-rail fence was built around the paddock with a ha-ha wall forming the western edge. The renowned landscaper, Gordon Ford (1918-1999), a follower of the remarkable English landscape architect Capability Brown (baptised 1716 - 1783), established the framework for this work. With a ha ha wall and rock works around the pool garden, and in 1958 the driveway and steps were built for the River house.

The 1961-built swimming pool was a circular concrete structure designed using a series of levelled steps suitable for children, but in 1971 a huge rainfall flooded the site, and permeated the soil with so much water it caused an explosion of hydrostatic pressure which propelled the pool out of the ground, broken and resting against an elm tree.

Once the River house site was established the road to the top of the hill was formed by the intrepid Keith Joslyn in 1971.

Nature’s Music

Weather, Birds + Animals

At the southern end of the great southern land, Australia is nurtured by the Southern, Pacific and Indian oceans on three sides and a huge dry inland. Due south about 3000km in Antarctica and due north about the same distance is still the Australian continent.

Melbourne’s climate is temperate and acutely seasonal, with oppressively hot summer months topping 40C which are forged in the far-away Pilbara deserts of the north, and sometimes winter drops to almost freezing point causing snow in the city. Variable winds can be northerly, hot and extremely dry, or southerly, cold and icy. And all of this, as they say, in one day in Melbourne, and usually with some rain.

The sub-climate sits well at Kew, where the rich tangle of trees and understory assembles a healthy natural environment for growth of plants and creatures.

Each season of the year brings a fresh set of sounds to the site. The persuasive noise of nature’s musicians rings out, this is the natural habitat to a zoological range of living things other than architects. Black Cockatoos feed on the pine cones high above ground, chew a bit, then drop them like missiles to the ground (or at unsuspecting others). Ducks roam the Yarra river and Doves roost on buildings.

Magpies give their Australian salute, warbling in chorus like so many tourists singing Waltzing Matilda down the canals of Venice. Bellbirds ring and Kookaburras laugh. Crows shriek as they will and Rosellas, Lorikeets and King Parrots tune in. Across this symphonic sound bowl Currawongs strike a pure note in their arias and the background sounds of small birds, Fantail, Myna, Robin, Thrush and Wattlebird completes the wall of noise.

This list of species is impressive and their impact intrinsic to this place. And there is another group of denizens, Brushtail Possums, Bats, Bandicoots and Rats live in the trees. Blue Tongue lizards, Skinks, Tiger Snakes and Tortoises hold the ground and water animals – Tree Frogs, Water Rat, Eastern Water Dragon and Short-finned eels remain near the river.

(List of birds, mammals, reptiles, frogs attached)

Constructions

The River (Butterfly) House

Peter had been working on the design of the River house since 1948, in the hope that sometime he would have the money to build it, so the concept of a minimum-interference with the land (located on the edge of a rocky cliff), with a ‘coathanger’ suspended body to the building, preceded design work on the Olympic Pool.

Design principles were similar in intent, a lean steel frame would support a lightweight cantilevered structure, which reduced expensive site works, and employed the minimum amount of materials for the maximum volume of construction.

The design was influenced by engineer Norman Mussen, who was lecturing on structures at Melbourne University, the time of Peter’s final year. He championed the importance of being able to analyse the stresses in a building structure and he introduced notions of pre-tensioned and post-tensioned reinforced concrete which is the structural principle of counter balancing forces.

This structural system was later employed for the more complex Olympic Pool design. In a letter dated around late 1952, Robin Boyd wrote to Neil Clerehan who was in New York, “Peter is still modelling houses and has hopes of a couple starting”, and he included a small sketch of the Butterfly concept in the letter.

Peter McIntyre and Dione Cohen were married at St John’s Church, Toorak, on 13 March 1954, and she went back that year to complete her final year of university studies at Melbourne University.

By 1954/55 Peter was busy working on the Olympic pool documentation and he and Dione operated their own practice, named ‘Peter and Dione McIntyre and Associates’, in creative collaboration. By that time, income raised from the Pool project enabled them to build the River (or Butterfly) House.

Later, as the building was under construction Dione produced a study sketch of the house showing it located in a forest of blackened trees - which investigated the colors it would be painted.

On completion, Butterfly House became a focus of enjoyment, celebration and fame - mixed with pangs of regret for the attention he gained as he tested an architecture of passionate experimentation – leading to him producing reliable, lasting buildings.

Rarely does the world of architecture provide a set piece showing the work of a single practice developing over nearly 60 years in the way this site does.

It embraces buildings and location changes, vegetation, subtraction and additions representative of each decade alongside a rich local history which dates back thousands of years.

Here is a developing world, where inventiveness, delight, daring and precision will be placed on a deeply pitched site that can hardly support human activity, much less a building.

As a starting point, the evocative portrayal by Dione McIntyre of the original ‘butterfly’ house colors, as an object set in a natural world of richly spattered foliage, sets the pattern. The original building is understatedly straightforward and logical in its simplicity.

The Modernist creed would suggest a suitability to function, the form will follow. Here, the form is that of a bridge, a simple couple of steel trusses sandwiching the rooms that make the house - decks each end. The trusses are supported centrally on a concrete base which allows for a minimum disturbance of the site, least connection on such a difficult foundation, and thereby a reduction of construction cost.

The building floats like a huge coathanger. Or is it a musical metronome, providing a measure of the tempo on site? Or simply a pendulum maintaining balance over central prop?

Like most good architecture, it defies simple description, there are many ‘appearances’ that could apply to it, the imagination is triggered by the architecture, just as we see images in the clouds, we visualise a number of metaphorical realities for this one, simple, contained house.

River House ‘Village’

This project is effectively a small Kew village - of homes and architect’s studios, family and friends, private gardens and a shared tangle of trees and bushes - which comprises a number of buildings accommodating family, friends and the McIntyre family’s architect’s studios and offices.

The McIntyre family have been living in one location in Kew, located some 4 kilometres from the centre of Melbourne, since 1952, using a number of different buildings located on the one broad site.

The entry from Swinton Avenue was preserved, the Council outlined that there should be no more subdivision and the Titles could be allocated to the McIntyre children.

In 1992, 8 October, the original caretaker’s house and later the McIntyre office building: known as the ‘Cottage’: was destroyed by fire, uninsured, and the Melbourne Fire Brigade charged a fee to attend the fire of $35,000. It was rebuilt in 1993 as ‘Phoenix’ and occupied by the architect’s office sharing accommodation with the ‘River’ house.

‘Cliff House’ was under construction during 2009, located at the back (east) of the site over many levels and with huge rooms opening onto decks with panoramic views of the Yarra in the foreground and the city skyline beyond.

The River House site consists of six habitable houses, studios and offices, along with a collection of complimentary structures (work sheds, garages and even a bird’s watch). It is a village located over 2.3 hectares, with a tennis court, pool, vegetable gardens, landing and Yarra River jetty. It contains its own roads, walking tracks, steps, lawns and a forest of trees.

This “most beautiful piece of land” had developed into a complex rich and workable village for the close community who shared an original dream.

End-piece

Reflection

Over the years, changes to the McIntyre’s thinking and needs has forced changes to the site and its houses, and additions reflect the developing family, along with an expanding group of people dwelling at Kew. There has been the need for studios for various family members and professional offices.

If ever there was a site of habitation where the living museum is at work, this is it, where and the ebb and flow of life on the river bank, which history records as being thousands of year old, continues at a contemporary pace.

The River house was an investigation of Modernist principles for fitness for purpose, designing using minimalist principles and a theatrical, operatic statement by a young and adventurous pair of architects with what appeared to be the world at their beckoning.

Developing preoccupations – the heritage issues that were being addressed in the architect’s practice as it matured - became part of the Kew mosaic when the family purchased the historic ‘Swinton’.

The pattern languages of Kyla Park and Dinner Plain were tested and revised with other houses built on Kew site (‘Phoenix’ and ‘Summer House’), as were issues of contemporary Modernity and sustainability

As these structures evolved, the land was sculptured and carved to provide access and a journey through the natural resources of the park-like setting. What was ultimately cultivated at Kew, however, is a journey through time which is captured within its architecture.