The Collins House, 
Palm Beach, NSW, 1938.






















This was Arthur Baldwinson's first Australian house. It was built for the importer Williams Collins as a "weekender". Baldwinson designed the house using a full-width verandah in lieu of an internal hall. The kitchen was conceived on the Frankfurt "scientific kitchen" model refined in Germany in the 1920s.

The exterior was clad in Sydney blue gum eucalyptus (stained red), the foundations were constructed in local sandstone and the interior was finished in Victorian silver ash. Baldwinson also designed the living room furniture with its upholstery in primary red and blue. Early reviewers commented on the use of colour, the red-stained weatherboard, the lime yellow doors, and the stark white trim. The architect (and friend) Walter Bunning wrote in THE HOME of November 1941 that the pale blue-grey paint on the eaves seemed "...to form an alliance with the sky".