Introduction

The narrative for the development of the Reeler House, Turramurra begins in 1975 when Ian and Patricia Reeler acquired a vacant lot and built a home in Holmes Avenue overlooking the picturesque bushland where the Reeler House is sited. Patricia Reeler recounts that from their Holmes Avenue prospect, her architect husband Ian was absorbed by the vacant Finlay Road lot across the small creek that divided the two timbered sites.

He saw it, she says, “as an empty piece of land to be filled. It was, in a sense, his blank canvas”. This parcel of land was acquired and in the early 1980s, Ian Reeler began developing the designs for a new house on the site that would challenge him for two years. The result is a design that Modern House is delighted to celebrate as a finished work, whilst also promoting an architect whose big picture thinking and meticulous detailing throughout his career has been long deserved of wider recognition.