Inside the incredible Melbourne home of the architect who made the NGV

When Matthew Danos first invited Georgia Geminder to his home during COVID lockdowns, he left out one small detail: it was the flat designed by Sir Roy Grounds – the Australian modernist architect behind the National Gallery of Victoria – for his family.

“I met Georgia during COVID lockdowns; we had been chatting on text for two months because we couldn’t see each other,” Danos, the managing director of James Richardson Investments, recalls. “We had our first date here because it was when they introduced the singles buddy policy. We sat by the courtyard before she got picked up by her sister at 8.45pm to beat the 9pm curfew.”

This was – is – no ordinary courtyard. The first of five units known as the “Hill Street Flats”, 1/24 Hill Street, Toorak, is renowned for its use of geometry – a circular courtyard, open to the sky and featuring two batches of bamboo, in the centre of a square-building footprint.

“All the primary spaces – lounge, dining, [the sleeping areas] were arranged in an open plan that exploded across and around the fully glazed courtyard,” wrote architect Tony Lee in his book Roy Grounds: Experiments in Minimum Living.

It is now for sale. While Danos lived here for eight years when single (and his sister, architect Georgia Danos, lived in it for seven years before she sold it to her brother), it wasn’t suitable for his growing family with now-wife Georgia Geminder, whose parents are rich-listers Fiona Geminder (née Pratt) and Raphael Geminder of Pact Group.

“So the last couple of years, since we got married, we haven’t lived in it,” Danos says. “I’ve used it for charity events, private functions, and I’ve had some friends stay here, but I didn’t want to rent it out. And now we’ve got two young kids ... it’s just not the time of our life to have it, unfortunately.”

Grounds’ Hill Street home shares design features with the NGV, which opened in 1968, the first major public building constructed in Victoria since the end of World War II.

“In both the NGV and the Hill Street flat, the wall is unbroken with a band of windows at the top, which forms a separation between the wall and roofline,” Lee says. “Most buildings have a series of windows which are openings with the wall between them.”

Both buildings have a symmetrical arrangement with a central entry. “For the NGV, it’s the archway which goes into the water wall, while for the Hill Street house, it’s a single, very oversized door,” Lee says.

They both used similar materials such as timber panelling on the walls, which remains a fixture of the Hill Street home but has been removed from the gallery.

While the Toorak flat mostly reflects Grounds’ original design (Grounds lived there with his family until his death in 1981), it has been through several iterations.

When cardiologist Dr Martin Hiscock bought the home in 2003, it had been modernised and become what he described as “nothing special”. He visited the State Library searching for the original drawings, and over one year, faithfully restored the home to its former glory.

“I put the cork wall back in the dining room, found the original tiles for the bathroom – I really wanted to bring back what Roy had done and intended. We even found the original 1950s plumbing,” Hiscock says.

Betty Grounds was still alive, and so Hiscock brought her to see the results. “She came in and said, ‘Why, it looks just like new.’”

Jellis Craig Stonnington selling agent Carla Fetter says that in 21 years in the industry, she has never sold a house like it.

“It’s very difficult for a real estate agent to value this – what it could be worth for one person would be vastly different to the next,” she says. “It’s like buying a piece of art.”

The guide is $2.3 million to $2.5 million.

Designers, architects and architectural students have flocked to the open days to experience something they’ve only seen in textbooks.

“This house hasn’t been offered near on 20 years, and it’s a very rare opportunity,” Fetter says. She has sent out seven contracts, some to downsizers who love mid-century architecture, as well as “younger bachelors who can see themselves meeting their future wife here”.

Owning Grounds’ house means access to a man who changed the way we interact with light.

Today, a sliding door leading to an outdoor space is commonplace. Before Grounds, houses were “dark and gloomy … [with] little windows, very high ceiling rooms that didn’t get a lot of natural light”, Lee says. “Roy made it possible for people to move from inside to outside rather seamlessly.”

For Danos, letting the house go has been emotional. “It’s really a work of art,” he says. “It’s time for it to go to someone who will cherish it and really appreciate it the same way we have.”