10/26/2026
What if a house looked inward instead of out?
This urban courtyard house is organized around a lightwell: a vertical void carved from the building volume that becomes an outdoor room at the center of daily life. Living spaces open directly onto it at the ground floor. Juliet balconies and openings at the bedrooms and upper hall extend the connection vertically, so the house reads as a sequence of linked spaces rather than a set of separate rooms.
The courtyard works three ways at once. It pulls daylight deep into the plan, gives the family a protected place to be outside, and acts as the threshold everyone passes through as light and seasons shift over the day.
At the street, the house is larger than the post-war bungalows around it, so the massing does the quiet work. A horizontal brick plinth picks up the eave lines of the neighboring homes. Above it, a metal-clad double gable offers a familiar residential silhouette with a clear contemporary identity. The front door sits where the facade folds back, a small covered moment of compression that marks arrival without statement.
Through careful craft and an open heart at its center, the outside becomes part of everyday life, and the house becomes a home.
