A home once judged Australia's best and held by the same family for two generations is on the market.
At first craftsmanship proved the best protection for the celebrated home known as the ''Round House'' in Deakin.
Now a heritage listing safeguards the 1950s home from being bulldozed, as older homes on large blocks in the inner south often are bought to make way for new ones.
The Round House has been rented since 2003 and is now listed for sale with agent Bill Lyristakis.
Soon after a senior philosophy lecturer at the ANU, Dr Bruce Benjamin, commissioned young, untried architect Alex Jelinek to design the family home, its radiating design was voted Australian house of the year by Architecture and Arts, a leading professional journal.
Mr Jelinek had fled Czechoslovakia after the communist coup, three weeks before he was to graduate with high honours from a special architecture school with the Prague Academy of Fine Arts.
After a brief stint in West Germany he came to Australia, earning a living laying railway tracks in Victoria, then as a leading hand on the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectric Scheme.
The son of a master builder, Mr Jelinek, who died in 2007, was also a builder and worked alongside an English team of tradesmen in 1957 on a 3800sqm block in Gawler Crescent, overseeing his first commission.
Dr Benjamin died in the early 1960s, having spent only a few years in the flat-roofed spiral dwelling.
His son Roger, who was overseas studying when his mother Audrey sold the Round House in 1982, accepted a posting at the ANU in 1998.
The Round House, described as an excellent example of post-war international style, came on to the market again in 1999.
Fearing it could be knocked down, Dr Benjamin bought the house and set about restoring its significant features.
''We repainted the timber work, we matched it with the original Queensland mahogany, a rare hardwood which is unobtainable today,'' he said.
''The timber work was still there, it had been painted green.''
An art historian attuned to the values of the original architectural concept, he said life in the Round House was like living inside a work of art.
''It is a very beautiful space to live in and I have not had that experience before or since, really, living in many other places here and overseas and so on,'' he said.
As an adult Roger Benjamin spent only three years at Gawler Crescent. The family later moved to Sydney and there is no likelihood of him returning to Canberra.
About 1993 the Registry of Significant 20th century architecture, a committee of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects, initiated heritage listing of the Round House, which was ratified in 2003.
This does not preclude alterations, but protects significant features.
Dr Benjamin said the original craftsmanship was sound and the design still refreshing.
''You are discovering new angles, new relationships in the forms you are living in,'' Dr Benjamin said.
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