Architecture
The case for the courtyard
Why the most useful room in a house is often the one without a roof.
March 2026 · 6 min
A courtyard does something a living room cannot. It holds people at different intensities at the same time. Someone reads in the shade. Someone else crosses on the way out. A third sits down for ten minutes and stays for two hours.
We design for that gradient. The commons at Building 71 is not one space but a sequence of them — a threshold, a shaded edge, a centre with a table, a stair that people sit on because it is exactly the right height.
The measure of a good courtyard is not how it photographs empty. It is whether, six months in, the furniture has moved to where people actually wanted it.