Architect Andrew Boyne and his wife, Erica, were not looking to buy land and build a house when they happened across this site in 2018. In fact, they were considering a return to the USA – Erica’s home country – to put down roots, but then they saw a For Sale sign on a battleaxe block not far from the Swan River in Mount Lawley. His interest piqued, Andrew recalled something his American mentor Robert Harvey Oshatz once told him: “The prerogative of an architect is to buy a difficult site and build a house.”
“I liked the sentiment,” Andrew says, “but in Perth, there are no difficult sites. They are all flat
