The Audette House

The original commission for the Audette House, located in Castlecrag, Sydney, was for a house in the American Colonial style. Instead the young architect, Peter Muller, delivered a modern Australian home heavily influenced by the philosophies of Frank Lloyd Wright.

Peter Muller has been in private practice designing numerous residential and commercial buildings since 1952. He has been the recipient of numerous scholarships and awards, including the Fulbright Scholarship in 1950 which saw him travel and study in the USA. In 1952 the Audette house was his first design as a qualified architect.

Muller tells of laying out the plans on the bed of his tiny Kings Cross apartment and setting up a model so that Bob Audette and his wife could walk around it ... [he] left them to view the model and plans without undue persuasion. While it was nothing like the original commission of a Colonial house, on Muller's return they agreed to build it, on the condition that it passed the CSIRO's sun orientation tests. It succeeded on all counts.

Karen McCartney, 50/60/70 Iconic Australian Houses: three decades of domestic architecture

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