Area: 400sqm
Family size: 2
3D Visualisations: Enceladus Studio
Design: Davidov Architects
About Studio
As a design studio, we work together with our clients to distill their needs, discarding the latest trends to arrive at an outcome that simply enhances and supports their lifestyle. Our designs are understated in character, opting for a sense of permanence and solidity in their execution. Material, space, and light are modified through a lens of simplicity creating meaningful spaces that nourish and uplift us.
Through a pared-back approach to our architecture and interiors, our work spans a range of scales and typologies from private houses, multi-residential projects, and homewares to institutional work. Our approach to each new commission is to build a strong relationship with our clients to unlock their vision.
To do this we must first gain an understanding of our client’s motivations and character as well as an understanding of the site and its potential. By discarding the latest trends and embracing an approach of simplicity and order, we arrive at a pragmatic yet poetic outcome.
The studio’s design direction is driven by a desire for refined simplicity and the personal; drawing inspiration from memory and an appreciation of the understated and vernacular. Travels through the Levant, Latin America, and rural Europe meld with recollections of life in Melbourne.
Our designs focus on crafting warm minimalist spaces through the principles of proportion, spatial sequence, composition, materiality, and light. The result is the creation of architecture that is timeless.
Robert Davidov is an active member of the local architecture community being heavily involved as a committee member of Architeam and is currently mentoring the next generation of architects through the University of Melbourne and the Australian Institute of Architects.
He was awarded the Ernest Fooks Memorial Award for Design and the FMSA Award for Architecture and Construction. He has been named to the Dean’s Honours List on 5 occasions.
Tucked away from the Bridport Street shopping precinct, LSH Residence comprises the reinvigoration of a Victorian-era wedge-shaped shop house, as well as the replacement of a tired 1970s extension with a contemporary and sensitive addition.
The original shophouse had numerous modifications over the years. Although small in footprint, the building contained 3 separate entries to the street and was riddled with dark and disjointed rooms. The principal strategy entailed the reinvigoration of the plan, including a study, bedrooms, and bathrooms, around a central sky-lit stairwell in order to bring light into the depth of the home.
Beyond the shophouse, the new addition required a simpler internal program. A generous living and meals area looks onto an intimate landscaped courtyard on the ground floor. Around the corner from the open plan area, the sunken reading nook accompanies a reflective pond, offering a chance for respite and quiet contemplation.
An expansive master suite is located on the floor above. The contemporary addition’s external expression takes cues from the existing shophouse’s architecture. Collectively, the single-hung windows, bluestone plinth, and string course inform a new façade of deep reveals and crisp shadow lines.
The site’s orientation enables the contemporary addition to face northeast, framing views out over the courtyard to the established trees of the streetscape beyond. The surrounding neighborhood inspired the project’s richly nuanced material palette. The honesty of the rendered shop-house elevation is paired with the contemporary addition’s off-white natural cement render.
Internally, the rendered walls complement an off-form concrete ceiling and raw metalwork. Feature stonework, stack bond oak parquetry flooring, and natural oak veneer panels provide warmth and finer grain detail, linking the home’s heritage rooms with contemporary spaces.
