Ball-Eastaway House

The Glenn Murcutt-designed house was commissioned by two artists, Sydney Ball (1933-2017) and Lynne Eastaway, and completed in 1983, winning the Wilkinson Award for residential architecture the following year. Two artist studios, purchased as agricultural nursery sheds, also sit on the 10-hectare property providing spacious working environments.

The property was purchased in 1976 after Ball and Eastaway had been evicted one too many times from artist studios in inner Sydney. Ball and Eastaway camped on the site many times before hiring Murcutt, with Ball’s only building stipulation being a 20-metre-long wall to hang one of his prized canvases.

The main house sits lightly on the earth, seeming to float clear of the ground alongside a sandstone shelf. Murcutt chose a barrel vault design and corrugated iron cladding as most suitable for the location. Importantly for Murcutt, his aim was for the house to respond intimately to the site, ‘to the colour, texture, scale, to the form of the land, to the shapes of the trees… and the delicacy of the landscape.’ And the inside of the house embraces the surroundings rather than closes them off – visitors can look from one end of the house to the other through glazing and into the bushland beyond.

The house also incorporates the work of both artists, that of their students and travels, as well as art and craft that inspired them. Eastaway moved out of the house around 1985 but retained a connection through a long-term friendship with Ball, before moving back into the house after Ball died in 2017. The bush setting also inspired both Ball and Eastaway’s artistic output over the decades. The house and grounds were photographed prior to its first ever sale.

Photographer: Chris Bennett

Date Photographed: April 2026

Original image format: born digital

Credit line: Caroline Simpson Library, Museums of History NSW. Courtesy of Lynne Eastaway. Photo © Chris Bennett.

Further reading: Quentin Sprague, ‘The house at Glenorie’, The Monthly, October 2023

Philip Drew, Touch this earth lightly: conversations with Glenn Murcutt, Duffy & Snelgrove, Sydney, 1999