History

"Thus for the first time a genuine architectural circumspection was brought within the financial reach of the average owner.... Among the more notable enterprises was....a firm called Merchant Builders in Melbourne, which offered various designs of the architect Graeme C. Gunn."

Robin Boyd, Epilogue, Australia's Home (1968)

In Australia in the mid 1960's, the housing market was experiencing a boom of a new phenomenon - project houses. These were architect-designed houses offered by a new series of building companies that promised better quality design than the average speculative built house.

In 1965 Merchant Builders, Melbourne entrepreneurs David Yencken and John Ridge founded one of the nation's most influential project house-building companies. For the next 26 years, Merchant Builders set not just new benchmarks for residential architecture in this country, but also site planning, and interiors as a total package. Yencken and the firm's consultant architect Graeme Gunn and consultant landscape architect Ellis Stones were also deeply interested in how to increase density in Melbourne's inner and outer suburbs without losing amenity of connection with landscape, and especially indigenous trees and plants - they were committed to a suburban landscape that was uniquely Australian.

Merchant Builders - Towards a New Archive

Yencken and Gunn worked together to develop a range of affordable well-designed houses that responded to site and landscape. Gunn's medium density designs for townhouses and project housing integrated built form with landscape, a strategy developed through working closely with landscape designer, Ellis Stones. While working for Merchant Builders, Gunn, along with Yencken, was influential in establishing the Cluster Title Act (1974) and Model Cluster (1975). Gunn eventually left Merchant Builders in the early 1970's before returning with his Four Seasons range for David Marriner in 1986.

Throughout his career Gunn pursued practice under his own name, later as Gunn Williams Fender (previously Gunn Hayball), and he worked with the Docklands Authority, VicUrban, RMIT, and practicing as Gunn Dyring Architecture and Urban Design. Iconic buildings designed by Gunn include the Baronda House, Nelsen Inlet (1968) for David Yencken and the Plumbers and Gasfitters Union Building, Carlton (1968-69).

Credited with changing the landscape of suburban housing in Australia, Gunn was awarded the President's Awaard for Lifetime Contribution to Victorian Architecture in 2001, and in 2011, he was the recipient of the Gold Medal of the Australian Institute of Architects.