The Robin Boyd Foundation’s Virtual Tour Collection is an online repository documenting significant sites in Australian architecture.
Each virtual tour is a record of both a physical space and its intangible human stories. Starting with a high-resolution 3D scan, the tours are enhanced by interactive points of interest and a series of short videos. These videos share commentaries and observations from architects, academics, family members, historians, volunteers and others, grounding the architecture in its social and historical context. Each is a hybrid digital experience: part open house, part treasure hunt, part oral history.
Born of (COVID) necessity, the Virtual Tour Collection has become a unique tool in the Robin Boyd Foundation’s mission to critically explore and enhance the power of architecture and design to reflect and shape Australian identity.
Boyd II / Walsh Street house
Boyd House II / Walsh Street was designed by Robin Boyd for his family in 1957 and is his best known work. It is an exemplar of modernist Australian architecture. The house remains largely unchanged from the time it was first designed and occupied by the Boyd family – a time capsule to the perennially popular mid-century modernist period. Furnished with pieces designed by Boyd’s associates Grant and Mary Featherston, and others, the house provides a unique insight into Melbourne’s design leaders of the 50s and 60s.
Manning Clarke House
The former home of Australia’s best-known historian Professor Manning Clark and linguist and educator Dymphna Clark. Located at 11 Tasmania Circle, Canberra, the house was designed by Robin Boyd in 1952.
Both Manning and Robin were pre-eminent writers and thinkers in the fields of history and architecture, respectively, and shared similar perspectives. Both sought to explore a uniquely antipodean approach and narrative rather than imitate their international counterparts.
Greg Burgess Studio
Launched at Open House Melbourne 2021, this virtual tour presents the Greg Burgess Architectural Studio, York Street, Richmond, as it was in November 2020. The space, a former bronze foundry in industrial Richmond, was home to Gregory Burgess Architects for 20 years. The tour includes Burgess Architects’ open studio, Greg’s personal workspace and other working and storage spaces.
We acknowledge and are very grateful of the contributions of our project partners:
