Every house on this list earns its spot somehow, but the red bar at the heart of this 1981 Mater Prize Home in Robertson might be the most honest floor plan decision we’ve seen yet. It’s built-in, it’s confident, and it sits at the centre of the living space like the one thing the architect refused to compromise on — as though the whole house got designed backwards from that exact spot, ideally with a drink already in hand. Everything downstream from it, gloriously, follows that same energy.
The kitchen goes all in on a bold blue-and-yellow palette — our best guesses sit somewhere between a genuine nod to Ukraine, full and undying allegiance to the Parramatta Eels, or a West Coast Eagles supporter who has never once compromised. Honestly, at this point we’ve stopped trying to pick a winner. Whichever it is, we mean it with real affection rather than a raised eyebrow. Walk further in and there’s an indoor garden greeting you at the entry before you’ve so much as taken your shoes off, wallpaper doing loud, unapologetic 1980s duty from room to room, and lino underfoot with the unmistakable air of something that once, somewhere, won an award. We just can’t tell you which one.
Out back, the garden has been paved in solid concrete — low-maintenance, sure, but also the kind of surface where coming off a bike stops being a scraped knee and starts being a genuine medical event. There’s also a small disembodied head propped in a corner of one room that nobody seems to have an explanation for, and which we’ve decided, out of respect for the house’s secrets, not to look into any further. All of this sits with a fairly direct line to Kessels Road and the M3 Pacific Motorway just beyond the front fence — handy for the commute, less so for the ambience.
Built to the Mater Prize Home standard the year 1981 apparently took very seriously, the place backs it up with genuine substance: a wide 21-metre north-facing frontage, three bedrooms with oversized built-in wardrobes, two bathrooms plus a powder room, a double garage, CCTV, an honest-to-goodness in-built safe, and a courtyard goldfish pond doing quiet double duty for feng shui. It’s close to Sunnybank Plaza, Westfield Garden City, Griffith University and UQ, with the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Hospital just up the road. It’s currently under contract, so if it’s found its next owner already — well, you don’t get many like this one anymore.
