We personalise boats. Hotrodders even personalise cars. We tattoo ourselves. But naming our houses seems almost taboo. Sure there are the quaint remnants of the copper, brass and stained-glass name plates. But these are almost coy, discreet affairs.
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Heritage constraints account for some stifling of free expression. Architect Billy Kavellaris wouldn't take no for an answer. He subverted the heritage issues on his Brunswick modernist box, by creating a trompe-l'oeil terrace-house facade.
To complete the ''traditional'' effect he included his firm's initials and the year it was constructed at the top of the building, KUD 2008.
For Kavellaris that identifying mark was about rekindling ''a traditional idea of builder and architect as mastercraftsmen''.
Indeed it's often owner builders who dare brand their properties with a contemporary flourish. Architects with a penchant for ''supergraphics'' include husband and wife architects Toby Reed and Anna Nervegna, who emblazoned the working drawing of their house on the facade of the building using the #1 from the drawing as representative of both their first home and the street number.
Architect Zvi Belling is also the owner of his building, the Hive in Carlton. Akin to the expressiveness found in '60s Kustom Kar Kulture, the Hive takes Belling's passion for the street culture of the inner city and emblazons the graffiti in concrete.
One historic rationale for naming and numbering a house was for the mail to reach its correct address. The Letterbox house in Blairgowrie, by McBride Charles Ryan, makes a bold virtue of this. As the name suggests the building tapers down to a number 7 metal letterbox, like a car hood ornament. Ironically such an expressive building probably doesn't need a number; it would be impossible to confuse it with anything else.
The Lyon Housemuseum takes the location marker principle to extremes. Corbett Lyon designed his house to be identified from three vantage points: satellite, street and interior.
In a nod to both Google Earth and Australian outback stations that have the property names painted on their roofs, Lyon laid the letters LHM into his landscape. It looks as if the building has landed on the letters.
''It was an idea not only branding the site in a very literal way - almost like a cattle brand - but it was also a way of connecting what is a very small public museum into the global network of museums both public and private,'' says Lyon.
On the urban scale, Lyon took inspiration once again from the country. Properties in Victoria's Western District often have their names carved into hedges, but the Housemuseum's corner block identifies its street names - Cotham and Florence - in 2.5-metre high, corbelled brick.
Inside the building at the ''very fine scale of the family'' the walls and ceiling are ''tattooed'' with 35,000 words.
''It's a not a family history but an extended family 'thought map' that we've digitally printed on to the timber panels,'' Lyon explains.
To those who baulk at naming their houses in anything but the most discreet manner, or see it jeopardising resale value, the Lyon family's extreme personalisation throws caution to the wind.
''It's a way of saying, 'This is a house that this particular family have lived in','' says Lyon.
Among the time capsule texts of family favourites - ''Kath & Kim'', ''blue wren'', ''Heineken'' - are momentous occasions: ''Met and married Corbett'', ''Walking on top of the Gas and Fuel building with my father'' and, significantly, ''Visiting Venturi's mother's house with Venturi''.
Indeed the shortcut to finding the Lyon Housemuseum is via Las Vegas. Robert Venturi's book, Learning from Las Vegas (see story Page 27), was a seminal influence on Lyon, who studied and worked with him.
His ''learnings from la Venturis''? ''It's all about buildings being able to convey meaningful content - compared to minimalist houses that are mute. That's the difference.''