The Inner Garden

The house has a name before it has a photograph: The Inner Garden. The name announces the organizing idea. A central courtyard, planted with a single tree, sits at the heart of the house, and the entire 15,000 square feet is arranged around it. The lounge, the kitchen, and the master bedroom all look at this garden. Not at the street.

The section is as considered as the plan. Below ground, one end holds services; the other holds a cinema room, an office, and a lounge, a quiet world beneath the house for retreat and work. The ground floor is where the family spends the day, all rooms radiating from the courtyard. The first floor belongs to the children, with an open terrace that looks down into the inner garden. The courtyard is not a feature of the ground floor. It is the vertical axis of the entire house, present at every level.

The architecture is clean and deliberate: white rendered volumes above a dark plinth, steel-framed grid windows, a stone entrance that steps up from the street. Two mature trees anchor the front garden. The massing is composed of recessed and projecting volumes under a flat roof, and each shift in plane is a decision about light, view, or privacy. This is iteration fifteen of the ground floor plan alone.