FAQs

In assessing the heritage value of a heritage place a place must meet the heritage criteria set out by the Heritage Council of Victoria (HECON).

• Criterion A: Importance to the course or pattern of our cultural or natural history (historical significance).

• Criterion B: Possession of uncommon, rare or endangered aspects of our cultural or natural history (rarity).

• Criterion C: Potential to yield information that will contribute to understanding our cultural or natural history (research potential).

• Criterion D: Importance in demonstrating the principal characteristics of a class of cultural or natural places or environments (representativeness).

• Criterion E: Importance in exhibiting particular aesthetic characteristics (aesthetic significance).

• Criterion F: Importance in demonstrating a high degree of creative or technical achievement at a particular period (technical significance).

• Criterion G: Strong or special association with a particular community or cultural group for social, cultural or spiritual reasons. This includes the significance of a place to Indigenous peoples as part of their continuing and developing cultural traditions (social significance).

• Criterion H: Special association with the life or works of a person, or group of persons, of importance in our history (associative significance).

The former Kenyon House is of local aesthetic, rare, technical and associative significance.        

In more specific terms the former Kenyon House is significant for the following reasons:

• The house is significant for its highly unusual architectural expression that, at the time of erection, would have defied all of the usual stylistic labels. It anticipated the emergence of the Post-Modernist movement from the mid-1970s, of which Corrigan would become a pioneering and pre-eminent exponent. (Criterion E, Criterion F)

• The house is significant as the first architectural commission of celebrated and award-winning Australian architect Peter Corrigan, who was a fourth-year university student at the time. As the firm is acknowledged as the progenitors and leading exponents of Post-Modernism in Australia, Corrigan’s early houses of the 1960s are extremely important as indicators of the development of his mature style. 

  
  

  
  

• The Kenyon House is rare on a broader metropolitan scale as one of only four houses that he built in the 1960s, of which only three now remain standing. (Criterion B; Criterion H)

The Amendment proposes to apply the Heritage Overlay (HO 147) to 35 Alto Avenue, Croydon on a permanent basis

Specifically, the amendment:

• Amends the Schedule to Clause 43.01 Heritage Overlay to introduce HO147 – Former Kenyon House at 35 Alto Avenue Croydon, and list the document ‘Statement of Significance: Former Kenyon House – 35 Alto Avenue, Croydon, April 2020’

• Amends the Schedule to Clause 72.04 - Documents Incorporated to list the document ‘Statement of Significance: Former Kenyon House – 35 Alto Avenue, Croydon, April 2020’ as an incorporated document. ‘Statement of Significance Statement of Significance HO147, 35 Alto Avenue Croydon, April 2020.’

• Amend Planning Scheme Map No. 2HO to apply HO147 to 35 Alto Avenue Croydon on a permanent basis.

The amendment proposes to introduce heritage protection to the property at 35 Alto Avenue Croydon.  

The single storey dwelling at 35 Alto Avenue Croydon (the former Kenyon House) was designed in 1964 for John and Maureen Kenyon, it represented the first architectural commission for Peter Corrigan, then a student but later to become famous as one-half of the celebrated and award-winning architectural partnership of Edmond & Corrigan.

The property is unique as the only example of his work in the City of Maroondah (since the demolition of his much later Ringwood Civic Plaza), the Kenyon House is rare on a broader metropolitan scale as one of only four houses that he built in the 1960s, of which only three now remain standing.

The property is currently the subject of a Neighbourhood Character Overlay Schedule 1 (NCO1) which triggers the need for a planning permit for demolition in order to ensure that new development is consisted with the desired character of the area. However, the current controls do not acknowledge the individual heritage significance of the site.

The use of the heritage overlay is the most appropriate way to control the demolition of the building as a way of achieving the objective of conserving the building. The heritage assessment revealed that the property achieves the threshold to justify the introduction of a heritage overlay.  

The proposed protection is in anticipation of the implementation of a Municipal Wide Heritage Study Review which is currently being prepared.  Due to the immediate risk to the existing dwelling, the preparation of the citation was undertaken as a matter of urgency in advance of other properties to Stage 2 of the review.

Any person can make a submission about the notice of this amendment. 

The submission must set out the submitter’s view of the amendment, why the submitter supports or objects to the proposed amendment. The submissions must clearly set out the relevant considerations upon which the submitter’s view are based.