Riverside Modern, a book on Studley Park's mid-century homes in Melbourne

Studley Park, in the Melbourne suburb of Kew, holds almost 100 experimental homes built between the 1940s and 1970s. Architect Jake Taylor stumbled on it while living nearby in 2020, made a self-guided walking tour that proved popular, and has now written Riverside Modern with photographer Jack Lovel, published by Thames and Hudson. Taylor calls streets such as Yarra Street a rare "time capsule": built out in about 15 years, with almost nothing before or since.

The houses were photographed without styling, as they are lived in today. Among Taylor's ten picks for Dezeen are Pettigrew House (1946), an early project by Robin Boyd with Kevin Pethebridge and Frank Bell, sensitively renovated by Flack Studio in 2018; Anatol Kagan's Bell House, which lifts its living rooms into the tree canopy, in a pocket locals nicknamed "Kaganville"; McGlashan Everist's Guss House, a steel and glass box arranged around a huge eucalyptus; and Graeme Gunn's Molesworth Townhouses, six concrete-block homes around a bluestone cobbled drive, now engulfed by Ellis Stones's planting.

Taylor credits the houses' survival, with little heritage protection until recently, to how carefully they were fitted to their sloping riverside sites. These are private homes, though Molesworth Townhouses sits in plain view on Yarra Boulevard. A good read for mid-century devotees, and a prompt for a slow walk next time you're in Melbourne.

Our summary of a story from Dezeen, published 14 October 2026. Read the original

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