Robin Boyd-designed Toorak home Milne House listed with $2.5 million-plus hopes

Milne House, the single-colour Robin Boyd-designed Toorak house, has been listed for August 11 auction.

Set on the corner of Toorak and Glenbervie Roads, it’s a four bedroom courtyard home last traded unrenovated in early 2006 for $1.63 million.

The Bennison Mackinnon agents Hugh Hardy and Andrew Macmillan have it listed with $2.5 million-plus hopes, marketing it as a Boyd masterpiece. As it is bold and unique, and environmentally sustainable, Title Tattle is surprised The Weekly Review's property columnist Neil Clerehan hasn't yet published a review, as it’s right up his architectural alley.

The agents are marketing the house crediting Boyd as designing the house in 1971, although State Library of Victoria photographs by Peter Wille suggest it was possibly in the late 1960s. The Malvern Heritage Study puts its date at 1970.

Either way, it is acknowledged as one of Boyd’s last homes by heritage authorities, since he died aged 52 in 1971. Milne House - commissioned by IJ Milne - comes with steep skilling roof forms in opposing combinations, bagged brick walls, separate wings, simple features and a near windowless front facade on its 640 sq m block.