Davidov Architects Clusters Three Ochre Volumes Around a Wind-Sheltered Courtyard on the Mornington Peninsula

The Mornington Peninsula south of Melbourne has become a magnet for ambitious residential projects, and many of them follow a predictable script: maximize the glass, frame the ocean, and let the landscape do the talking. LPS Residence by Davidov Architects takes the opposite route. Sited in Flinders on a large property surrounded by vineyards, the house is composed of three steep-roofed volumes rendered in coarse ochre cement, clustered around a central courtyard that doubles as a protected outdoor room. The architecture looks less like a seaside retreat and more like a small agricultural compound, which is exactly the point.

What makes the project worth studying is its disciplined approach to openings. Instead of wrapping the house in floor-to-ceiling glass, Davidov Architects punched deliberate, often square apertures into thick rendered walls, controlling solar gain, framing specific views to the surrounding landscape, and creating a gradient of privacy that shifts from room to room. The result is a house that prioritizes thermal comfort and psychological refuge over panoramic spectacle, a rare posture for a coastal home completed in 2022.

Three Wings, One Courtyard

The three individually articulated volumes house distinct programs: sleeping, living, and dining. Each wing is capped by a steep skillion roof that reads as a simple agricultural silhouette against the rolling landscape. Viewed from outside, the ochre-tinted cement render and limited fenestration give the building a monolithic, almost fortified quality. The wings fan out to capture views in multiple directions while converging on a shared courtyard at the center.

That courtyard is the project's strategic core. On the Mornington Peninsula, hot days often coincide with strong coastal winds that make standard outdoor terraces unusable. By arranging the three wings as a buffer, Davidov Architects created a contained outdoor room that stays sheltered without sacrificing the connection to sky and landscape. It is a textbook application of the prospect-and-refuge concept: openness when you want it, enclosure when you need it.

Controlled Light Through Thick Walls

The facades tell you immediately that this is not a house interested in transparency. Square openings are carved into deep rendered walls, producing thick reveals that catch and modulate sunlight throughout the day. On the courtyard side, timber lattice screens add a secondary filter, throwing geometric shadow patterns across interior floors and walls. The overall effect is closer to Mediterranean or North African vernacular than to the glass pavilion tradition that dominates Australian coastal architecture.

A recessed timber entrance, framed by the heavy rendered walls and approached over gravel, reinforces the sense of arrival and compression before the house opens up to its courtyard views. Every opening feels considered rather than generous, which is what gives the interiors their quiet, almost contemplative atmosphere.

Timber Screens and Shadow Play

Solid timber is the house's secondary material, deployed as exposed rafters, screen doors, joinery, and the lattice panels that mediate between interior and courtyard. The screens are not decorative afterthoughts. They serve triple duty as privacy barriers, sun filters, and wind breaks, and their cross-shaped perforations cast sharp geometric patterns that shift throughout the day. It is a low-tech strategy that adds spatial richness without mechanical systems.

The interplay between the coarse rendered walls and the warm timber elements keeps the material palette tight but never monotonous. Joinery throughout the house is distilled to its raw components, an approach that reads as both honest and agricultural, consistent with the shed-like vocabulary of the surrounding vineyard properties.

Vaulted Interiors, Grounded Materials

Internally, the steep skillion roofs translate into vaulted ceilings defined by exposed timber rafters. In the dining zone, linear pendant lights hang from the ridge line and wash the textured plaster walls in warm light, while a solid timber table anchors the room beneath. The living zone takes a different tack: a sunken brown leather seating area frames a precisely cut horizontal window that puts the landscape at eye level, turning the vineyard beyond into a compressed cinematic strip.

Polished concrete surfaces appear at key moments, including the kitchen island, bathroom vanities, and a cellar tasting table, grounding the palette in a material that is robust enough for a rural property while carrying the same tonal warmth as the ochre walls. The continuity of color between render, concrete, and timber gives the interiors a cohesion that feels effortless, though it clearly is not.

Quiet Rooms, Considered Details

The smaller rooms reveal the care that went into the detailing. A reading alcove lined in vertical timber paneling, with a built-in bench and concealed warm lighting, is the kind of space that encourages you to stay put. The bathroom vanity combines a timber counter with a vertical light fixture and slatted blinds that stripe the room with filtered daylight. A narrow corridor of rendered walls leads to a timber staircase under soft ambient light, turning circulation into a sequence of compressed spatial moments.

None of these rooms demand attention. They are calibrated for comfort and retreat, and they reinforce the project's central thesis: that a house on a dramatic site does not need to perform drama. Restraint, here, is a form of generosity.

Framing the Landscape Without Consuming It

Two moments capture the project's attitude toward its setting. In one, an interior hall frames an olive grove through a wide central opening flanked by corner columns, composing the view as if it were a painting hung at the end of a gallery. In another, the living room's horizontal slot window compresses the vineyard landscape into a panoramic strip visible from the sunken seating. Both strategies treat the view as something to be selected and edited, not swallowed whole.

The surrounding landscape itself was handled with similar restraint. Native indigenous species were planted for medium canopy and undergrowth, and because the house was built on the footprint of the original dwelling, no trees were removed. The architecture sits within its context rather than imposing itself on it.

Plans and Drawings

The floor plan reveals how the three wings radiate from the central courtyard, each angled to capture a different orientation and view corridor. The split-level section drawing shows how the steep skillion roofs generate vaulted interior volumes while keeping the external profile compact. You can also read the relationship between the two-story sleeping wing and the single-story living and dining zones, a massing strategy that allows the house to step down with the topography rather than fighting it.

Why This Project Matters

LPS Residence matters because it offers a credible alternative to the glazed modernist box that has become the default for high-end coastal homes in Australia. By limiting openings, thickening walls, and organizing the plan around a sheltered courtyard, Davidov Architects produced a house that performs well in a harsh coastal microclimate without relying on mechanical comfort systems as a crutch. The prospect-and-refuge concept is not new, but it is rarely applied this literally or this effectively in contemporary residential work.

More broadly, the project demonstrates that a regional architectural vocabulary, one rooted in the agricultural buildings and vineyard sheds of the Mornington Peninsula, can yield a house that feels both specific to its place and rigorously modern. The ochre render, exposed timber, and polished concrete are not nostalgic gestures. They are material choices that earn their place through performance and restraint. In a market saturated with transparency, this house makes a compelling case for opacity.

LPS Residence by Davidov Architects. Located in Flinders, Mornington Peninsula, Melbourne, Australia. 450 m². Completed in 2022. Photography by Enceladus Studio.

About the Studio

Share Your Own Work on uni.xyz

If projects like this are the kind of work you want to make, uni.xyz is a place to publish your own, find collaborators, and enter design competitions.