When the architects are also the owners, the brief has nowhere to hide. LLDS Architecture’s Northcote House, slotted into a former car park in a Melbourne laneway just 4.6 metres wide, is the product of a practice designing for itself — and the result is one of the most technically inventive timber homes to come through the Australian Timber Design Awards in recent years.
Winner of the Fit Out – Residential prize at the 25th edition of the awards, the project reimagines the Victorian terrace typology through advanced digital fabrication. Rather than reach for an off-the-shelf engineered timber product, the architects developed their own — a bespoke structural system called Cross-Laminated Plywood, or CLP, developed in collaboration with TGA Engineers. Three layers of 18mm birch plywood, structurally laminated together, form the free-form roof, with 19 rafter beams and 76 bracing plates left entirely exposed as a dramatic sculptural soffit. It is the kind of ceiling that makes a room.
When the Material Becomes the Architecture
A milled plywood staircase descends through a central void into a ground-floor snug, its layers stacked and compressed with threaded rods in a detail explicitly designed for disassembly. Every component was manufactured by Power to Make within five kilometres of the site — a supply chain decision that is as much philosophical as it is logistical. All plywood is FSC-certified, finished in solvent-free Osmo wood wax, and built to be taken apart rather than demolished.
Reflecting on the project, judge Anthony Burke — Professor of Architecture at UTS, host of Grand Designs Australia and Restoration Australia on the ABC, and presenter of By Design on ABC Radio National — described it as a standout entry in a competitive field. The combination of bespoke fabrication, material transparency, and design ingenuity across a 4.6-metre-wide footprint is, by any measure, a remarkable achievement.
Since its ATDA win, Northcote House has gone on to claim the Premier Award at the 2024 Australian Interior Design Awards, the AIA Victoria Sustainability Award, and Dezeen’s Urban House of the Year 2024 — a sweep that confirms what the judges recognised first.
Entries for the 27th Awards Now Open
Northcote House is a reminder that the Australian Timber Design Awards have a track record of identifying projects before the rest of the world catches up. With entries now open for the 27th edition, visit timberdesignawards.com.au/how-to-enter/ to submit your project.
