The courtyard house, revisited
The oldest plan there is, built again on a suburban plot. Owen photographed it a year after the owners moved in...
A courtyard house turns its back on the street and its face to the middle. It is how people built in hot places for three thousand years, and it works in a cold one too, for a different reason: privacy.
The plan
Four wings around a square of garden, each one room deep, so every room has the courtyard on one side and the world on the other. The front door opens into the garden, not the house.
A year on
The tree has grown into the space, which was the plan. The owners eat outside from April to October. The street side, blank when we photographed it at completion, has a climbing rose on it now.
The house is not the building. It is the square of sky in the middle.
What we would change
The kitchen wing faces north. In a courtyard house that is a mistake you notice in January. Next time the kitchen goes on the south side and the bedrooms take the shade.
One building a month, by email
A photograph, the plan, and the reason. Nothing else.
Hana Sato
Architect and one of the four partners. Writes most of what appears here and draws the plans with no furniture on them.
Owen Blake
The studio's photographer. Returns to every building a year after completion, which is when the pictures get taken.
Folio
An architecture and interiors journal: houses, rooms, materials, and the reasons behind them.
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