Studio Kennon Wraps a Portsea Family House Around a Light Court Built to Weather the Southern Ocean

Most coastal houses on exposed ground are built as defences. They use thick walls, sealed glass and finishes chosen to look new for as long as possible. Wildcoast Residence by Studio Kennon, led by Pete Kennon and Zoe Fayman, takes a different position. It sits on the last ridge of the Mornington Peninsula in Portsea, facing Bass Strait, where wind off the Southern Ocean arrives with rain and salt. The house does not try to hold that weather off indefinitely. It is arranged to work with it.

Three things make the project worth close attention. The first is the plan: three built forms wrap a central light court and garden designed with landscape architect Nathan Burkett. The second is that the living pavilion has two modes. It can open fully in calm weather and close into a sheltered retreat in a storm. The third is a material palette that expects to change. Board-formed concrete, lime-rich hand-applied render and limestone salvaged from the historic Sorrento Hotel are all chosen to age in place. The finish schedule reportedly allows for roughly thirty years of weathering. That is an unusual thing for a private house to plan for, and it changes how the whole building should be read.

A Pavilion With Two Modes

The north-facing living pavilion is the part of the house that responds to the weather. On a still day its operable walls slide back. The flat roof then reads as a canopy over the lawn, and the slim concrete piers become the only boundary between inside and garden. On a bad day the same room closes up and turns away from the worst of the wind. This is the most practical idea in the house. It does not offer one ideal condition that only works a few days a year. It gives the family a room that is useful in both kinds of weather.

Look at how low and horizontal the pavilion stays. The raised pool and perennial beds sit close to it, so the building reads as part of a terrace rather than an object on the lawn. Where the glazing meets a tall rubble stone wall, heavy masonry and light glass are placed directly side by side. That contrast between the two sets the material logic for the rest of the house.

Materials That Are Expected to Age

The entry is where you can feel the material decisions most directly. Rough render, rubble stone, board-marked concrete and a timber canopy meet in a tight sequence, with gravel and grasses at their base. The limestone salvaged from the Sorrento Hotel is worked into this threshold. That gives it a specific local meaning: the family has long ties to the area and runs the hotel nearby. The reuse is not decorative. The stone carries a history that a new quarry block could not.

The lime-rich render is the most deliberate choice here. In salt air it will chalk and soften rather than crack and peel. Its surface becomes more irregular over time, and it is meant to. We think this is a more honest position for a coastal house than the usual cycle of repainting. It does require the owners to accept a building that will look different in ten years than it does on the day the photographs were taken. Inside, framed openings between plastered walls carry the same palette through to the stone island and the darker fireplace wall.

The Light Court as the Centre of the Plan

The plan places a long east to west wing for the private rooms, the glazed living pavilion to the north and a third form so that together they enclose a garden. On an exposed ridge this courtyard matters more than any view out to the water. It is the one outdoor space the wind cannot reach. Ferns, hostas, clipped shrubs and broad-leaved plants grow there, which would not survive on the open side of the site.

The courtyard is seen through two kinds of opening. One is an arched opening set into board-marked concrete. The other is frameless corner glazing. The arch frames the garden like a room you look into, while the glass corner makes the boundary almost disappear. The planning context also helps explain the plan. Bushfire overlays, land-slip risk, flood boundaries and covenant setbacks all narrowed the buildable area, so turning the house inward to make its own landscape reads as a sensible response, not just a stylistic preference.

Living Rooms With Their Backs to the Wind

The living spaces are softer than the exterior suggests. A curved boucle sofa, a round timber coffee table, a linen-covered armchair and a travertine fireplace surround give the rooms a domestic, lived-in quality. That balances the concrete. Large windows frame hedges, boulders, lawn and a wooded slope rather than wide ocean views, and that restraint fits the plan's general wariness about exposure.

The brief asked for a modest forever home that could grow with a young family. At 692 square metres the house is not small, and it is fair to say so. Where it does deliver on modesty is in how the rooms feel. The spaces are scaled for sitting, with corner windows and low furniture, rather than for showing off.

Kitchen and Dining: Stone and Oak

The kitchen is organised around a stone-clad island set against oak cabinetry. An oval timber dining table, green folding chairs and a leather cantilever chair loosen what could otherwise feel like an overly composed scene. A round stone-topped pedestal table beside the island adds a smaller, more informal place to sit. In a house meant to grow with children, that kind of casual spot will probably get more daily use than the formal dining table.

Private Rooms in Plaster and Travertine

The bathrooms show the studio's detailing at its most careful. The narrow powder room has pink plastered walls and small square floor tiles, and a single slot of daylight falls across the marble basin. In the main bathroom, a freestanding bath sits in an alcove framed by travertine jambs, lit by a concealed cove above a small artwork. Both rooms rely on enclosure and indirect light rather than views. That is consistent with a house that keeps its openness for the courtyard and the pavilion.

Why This Project Matters

Wildcoast Residence makes a clear argument about building on exposed coastlines: plan for weathering instead of trying to prevent it. Lime render that chalks in salt air, reused hotel limestone and a pavilion that can either open up or shelter are all practical answers to a harsh site. The thirty-year horizon in the finishes treats time as a design input. Few residential projects state that so directly.

The project has its tensions. A 692 square metre house described as modest invites scepticism. Its long-term success also depends on owners who accept a building that will visibly change. Still, the central idea holds up. A sheltered garden, enclosed by three simple forms and surrounded by materials with local history, is a more convincing model for living on the Mornington Peninsula than another sealed glass box facing the view.

Wildcoast Residence by Studio Kennon (lead architects Pete Kennon and Zoe Fayman), with landscape architecture by Nathan Burkett. Portsea, Victoria, Australia. Area: 692 m². Completed: 2026. Photography by Felix Forest.

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.