Courtyard house

The house is situated in a popular seaside suburb close to the centre of New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland. The plan is a response to the corner site’s wedge shape and its northerly aspect (north being the sunniest direction in the southern hemisphere), as well as the positive experience of living in a previous home with a courtyard arrangement. Discretionary planning permission allowed the house to be massed close to both street boundaries, increasing the courtyard area. In New Zealand, planning controls often require houses to be set back a minimum of three metres from the street.

Brick construction references a material used in many of the original houses in the neighbourhood and provides a memory of the previous house that stood on the site — a modest 1940s ‘box’. It also creates the solidity required for privacy and sound protection from a busy road on one side, and adds exterior and interior textural richness. Brick screens and an entrance portal are the only intrusions in the otherwise solid exterior form, which is intended to evoke the sense of a garden wall. As an alternative to conventional windows, and as a device to reinforce the house’s wall-like qualities, a continuous clerestory separates the floating timber-lined roof from the wall below. In the space between the wall and the street, densely planted sunken gardens are intended to soften the brick and offer a verdant gift to the street.

The entire house is disposed around a central swimming pool, valued as much for its sensory as recreational attributes. The simple plan form sees the house divided into two zones; public living areas orientated to the busier street side and three bedrooms massed along the quieter side road.

The house’s impenetrable form and intimate relationship to the street challenge traditional perceptions of the New Zealand house typology. During construction there was endless speculation as to whether it might be a library or some other community facility. Now complete, it has been enthusiastically accepted, with people of all ages responding positively to both it and the surrounding gardens that are carefully maintained by the owners.