Humble

Without a doubt one of my favourite, no darn it, my absolute favourite activity to include in any weekend is a home open.  In particular I love going to look at mid century houses that have been in the same family since they were built and are completely untouched by renovators.   A 1950-70's house that has been lived in by one family since construction often has such a wonderful sense of comfort and unpretentious joy, confident in its original design to just stay the same, unlike so much more recent house design.

Today I had a whizz through this house built in 1975, on the market in one of Perth's most expensive suburbs in a blue chip location.  What I love about it is its utter ordinariness (is that a word?) which you would never find today in this hood.   In the mid seventies, at the other end of the design spectrum, with Iwanoff's Brutalist to your left, to your far right saw extremely simple, yet graceful houses built for those with less directional tastes.  This is one such house.

 Drinks on the terrace tonight darling?

Hang on, now that's a bit racy, some crazy paving under the clothes line, go on, cut sick!

Plain, yes, but still sort of lovely.  What happened to that style of tiling I wonder.

The estate agent appreciated my confession to viewing with an interest in mid century design (I've given up trying to come up with stories any more), and even humoured me with ideas of opening up the serving hatch from the kitchen to make the space flow, but who is he kidding.  This house will undoubtedly be met by a demolition team and something enormous with mega-swank built in its place. Sigh.