A large open-to-sky courtyard is the heart and focus of this house that is located on a steeply sloping site that falls away from the entrance road. The open courtyard is crossed and circumvented at all levels creating intimate contact with the entire house.

A 3-storey high off-form concrete wall creates a barrier and divides the house ‘private’ and ‘public’ zones and separates the courtyard from a double volume glass box reception space – the ‘public’ zone. The concrete wall is constantly penetrated as we pass from public to private moving around the house.

The idea is to bring the scale of the street frontage elevation in line with the house context by creating a 2-storey ‘light’ box behind which the private spaces are focused i.e. the entire frontage belongs to the public zone.