As anyone perusing one-bedroom apartment listings today will attest, it’s rare to find one with views in all four directions; near impossible, when you limit your search to those that are accessible to a first-home buyer. Yet that is what architect Ben Ellul found: a 58-square-metre studio apartment in the inner eastern Melbourne suburb of Toorak, in the state-heritage-listed Caringal Flats, originally built in 1951.
Caringal Flats was designed in an era of radical experimentation in urban living, and its concrete construction, cantilevered balconies and large panels of glazing signal it as an example of early modernism in Australia. Its architect, John W. Rivett, was likely influenced by the work
