De Rosee Sa Architects were hired when a client bought land across the street from where they were living in order to prevent the property from becoming overdeveloped. A storage shed that was already on the land, which had been a wood yard, is what drove the housing restrictions for the new project – the new home’s perimeter had to match that of the shed’s outline. They also had a vertical height limit they had to stay under, which led the architects to design a new basement level to accommodate everything the client wanted.

The ground floor houses a living room, kitchen, and bedroom with an attached bathroom. Wanting to maximize light throughout the narrow property, they designed three external courtyards between the three spaces, which is how the home got its name, the Courtyard House. A series of steel and glass doors separate the spaces allowing for open sight lines from the front to the back, along with the ability to open them up for indoor/outdoor living.
Cedar panels hung vertically clad the courtyard walls, a nod to the land’s past, and continue through parts of the interior creating continuity. It warms up the stark white of the other surfaces.

Photos by Alex James.

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