Seattle-based Wittman Estes has designed a small studio in the back yard of a modest house in Seattle; they call the project Grasshopper Courtyard Studio. It is a fantastic little project and a Seattle Chapter American Institute of Architects award winner. The project is also interesting as a solution to Seattle’s current struggle to accommodate growth. Grasshopper Courtyard Studio demonstrates a way that a family can continue to occupy a small urban lot without negatively affecting the scale of neighborhood. It is a beautifully elegant project.

Description
The Seattle housing shortage has increased pressure on single family neighborhoods to provide more usable space on limited single family lots. Normative new housing demolishes existing small buildings and replaces them with ?Seattle modern boxes? that maximize building size and density within zoning setbacks. Grasshopper Courtyard Studio offers an alternative density called courtyard urbanism. Maintaining the small footprint of a 1940s house (the lot is 4,500 square feet), a multifunctional 360-square-foot studio was added along the rear alley. The resulting interstitial space formed a private terrace open to the sky. This courtyard urbanism tripled the usable square footage of the site by blurring the lines between indoor and outdoor space. A central silk tree provides dappled shade in summer. The illusion of a much larger property is created through ?borrowed landscape? from adjacent trees and sk...