Roy Grounds: Experiments in Minimum Living

Roy Grounds is well known as the dogmatic and bombastic architect who designed the Australian Academy of Science’s Shine Dome, in Canberra, the National Gallery of Victoria on St Kilda Road, and the Victorian Arts Centre. This book explores Grounds’ early works and presents a different aspect of his character: a perceptive architect who used his own lived experience to inform his work.

Abandoning his emerging practice and family in 1937, the young Grounds rushed to London in pursuit a client he had fallen in love with. Penniless and unemployed he lived frugally and simply by flat sitting becoming familiar with the Minimum Flat concept. On his return to Melbourne, he utilised the concept to secure work, experimenting with designs for small flats as he built a reputation and was celebrated as Melbourne’s leading designer of flats at the time.

Richly illustrated with plans and photographs, this book will delight those with an interest in modernist design and anyone looking for simple and affordable forms of housing.