Merchant Builders

Founded in 1965, innovative development company Merchant Builders pioneered cluster housing and townhouse prototypes that reimagined suburbia as relational rather than purely private.

Their design briefs called for ambiguity: interiors that resisted rigid functionalism, and exteriors that blurred thresholds between house, neighbour and landscape. Pergolas, verandas and sunscreens created spaces of in-betweenness-sites for encounter, neighbourliness, and shared amenity.

Edited by Alan Pert and Philip Goad, Merchant Builders: This is Not Subtopia! reframes the story of suburbia, drawing on newly uncovered archives, photographs and first-hand interviews. It positions Merchant Builders' suburban experiments as a profound, if under-recognised, response to the problem of subdivision, and connects their legacy to today's urgent debates on affordability, sustainability, and the endless expansion of suburbia.

More than nostalgia, Merchant Builders is a call to arms: a reminder that our suburbs can be designed for sharing, ecology, and community.

About the Author

Alan Pert is Professor and Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, where he teaches curatorial practices, architectural theory and design studio. His research spans architecture, exhibitions and scholarly publication, with a particular focus on housing and suburban design. He chairs the university's Hallmark Research Initiative for Affordable Housing and collaborates with the school's Design Lab, which engages with communities and councils across regional Victoria.

Philip Goad is Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor and Chair of Architecture at the University of Melbourne, where he is also Director of the Australian Centre for Architectural History, Urban and Cultural Heritage (ACAHUCH). A leading authority on modern Australian architecture, his research encompasses twentieth-century design, suburbia, and the work of Robin Boyd, Merchant Builders, and other postwar innovators.