Certificate of authenticity
Kathryn Franco
Pettit + Sevitt The Modernist Project
Piper Press ISBN 9780980834796
This book has been verified as human‑created with no more than de minimis use of AI.
- Certification number
- 1000-0102-5409
- Certification date
- 23 October 2026
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In their own words
Shared and kept up to date by Kathryn Franco.
About the author
Kathryn Franco is a Sydney based publisher, writer and former journalist. She worked as a researcher and producer on the Nine Network’s Sunday Program, contributing to investigative stories and weekly arts, film and culture segments, before moving into internet news media and business and leading large content teams. She holds a First Class Honours degree in Fine Art from the University of Sydney, where she majored in film theory, semiotics and art history. She also holds a Master of Business Administration from the Australian Graduate School of Management at University of NSW, Sydney. Founder and editor of Sydney House Journal, her interests include architecture, art and design, with a particular focus on modernism, housing, social history and visual culture: sydney-house.com She is the co‑owner of the independent Australian publishing company Piper Press.
About the book
The illustrated history of influential Australian project home builder Pettit + Sevitt. Founded in Sydney in 1961, Pettit & Sevitt were pioneers of a burgeoning project home industry. Their mission was to make it possible for Australians to buy an architect‑designed home at a price they could afford. This became an important modernist movement that shaped how Australians built their homes and thought about design. Working with five of Australia’s most renowned architects including Ken Woolley, Michael Dysart, Russell Jack, Neil Clerehan and Harry Seidler, they created homes that were modular, functional and beautiful in their simplicity. Pettit & Sevitt display villages became weekend attractions and their houses won numerous architectural awards. They introduced people to the possibility of design as part of everyday life and reflected a growing confidence in Australian domestic architecture. Their houses, and those of their contemporaries, became associated with what would be known as the ‘Sydney School’, a loosely defined group of architects whose work embraced natural materials, economical spatial planning and responsiveness to Australia’s unique landscape. This book is the history of an ambitious modernist enterprise, a valuable resource and a record of Pettit & Sevitt’s enduring place in Australian architecture, design and suburban life. The book includes a foreword by internationally respected Australian industrial designer Marc Newson, who explains how his four decade career was shaped by his exposure to modern design and his mother, who worked at Pettit & Sevitt.
Inspiration
Born and raised in Sydney, Kathryn Franco grew up in a project home sub‑division with her brothers, mum and dad, a German Shepherd (or two) and a pug. Mahjong, Twister, IKEA pine lounges and Marcel Breuer Chesca chairs were a perfect match for the deep green shag pile carpet, the lime green kitchen and the expansive 3 metre timber bar with inlayed brown tiles across which many games of Trivial Pursuit and chess were played. Suddenly the owner of a Pettit & Sevitt Lowline in 2011, she began writing about Pettit & Sevitt online at sydney-house.com on June 22, 2014. It was a time when little‑to‑no detailed information was being published about restorations of Pettit & Sevitt houses – the architect‑designed houses that defined and influenced the evolution of mid‑century Australian suburbs.
How it was written
After collecting information for a decade, Kathryn Franco began intensive research into Pettit & Sevitt in 2024, scouring Ron Sevitt's and Ken Woolley's archive at the Powerhouse Museum to piece together the many threads woven by letters, plans, sketches, travels and transcripts. This expanded to interviewing architects such as Michael Dysart and Penelope Seidler, referencing existing research, examining records and images at the State Library of NSW, delving into family memorabilia from owners, architects, builders and people who grew up in and around their influential display houses, and tracking down former employees to tell the story in detail. It includes details about the early years, the making of architecture that was accessible to middle class Australians, the development of the 'Sydney School' and their competitors, their impact on culture through advertising, graphic design and cinema, the business of better living and Pettit & Sevitt houses today.