Middle East

Background

Courtyard House is a new build 450m2 house that sits within the grounds of the client’s parents’ home, in which one of them had grown up in. Based around a series of varied outdoor courtyards, the house is designed to provide the young family with their own secluded privacy, together with wide reaching views across the site.

The house was designed with a striking, yet sympathetic contemporary aesthetic using clay fired brick, juxtaposing with an existing house on the site and visible from the surrounding streets.

The Brief

The clients approached Gregory Phillips Architects to design a house that could offer a contemporary solution to sit alongside their existing family house.

To be built in close proximity, it was important to the clients that they felt that the house would provide the separation they sought, yet welcoming enough to the extended family, as the house would literally form part of the grounds of the existing house and be viewed from all angles.

The clients wanted to use courtyard outdoor spaces to create private recreational areas, and visual variety to the existing garden and grounds. To be used as a long-term family home, the new build property would need to offer bedrooms for children and guests, together with separate dining and kitchen spaces.

What we did

We felt it was important to provide the clients with privacy within the house – not just from overlooking by the existing family house, but also from several three-storey neighbouring properties on adjacent streets surrounding the site.

Accommodation was designed around a central outdoor courtyard and double-height gallery facing directly onto it.

Part two-storey, part three-storey – a ‘garden pavilion’ wing was designed to sit within the existing family garden, creating a sculptural piece of architecture in the grounds of the existing house. Containing the main family spaces, together with a primary bedroom suite – it overlooks both the existing garden and new central courtyard.

A sloped roof and patterned brickwork façade reference vernacular forms and enrich the relationship with the existing landscaped grounds.

Outcomes

A sensitive, yet contemporary new house that compliments its family neighbour.