Courtyard hou

Designed for a couple with three young children, this three-story compact house on a small 30’ x 90’ lot is located on a hillside walk street with direct access to the beach just a couple of blocks away. Strict local ordinances and codes dictate maximum lot coverage, maximum height, minimum open exterior areas and a host of other restrictions that have resulted in typical repeated housing typologies in the area. As such, most buildings include large balconies pushed to the extreme exterior edges of the buildings to meet the code required open space, then the remaining interior lot area is filled solid with building mass,  resulting in bulky block-like structures full of perimeter balconies.  Brooks + Scarpa/Tara Wuj... More