Courtyard House

Courtyard House occupies a deep, narrow plot at the edge of Hoi An's expanding residential fabric. The clients asked for a home that could receive grandparents for long stays, support two people working from home, and remain comfortable through humid summers without becoming inward or sealed. The project borrows the cadence of older local houses, where rooms, courts, and covered passages alternate along the length of a site. It does not reproduce their image. Instead, it translates their environmental intelligence into a contemporary family plan built around shared ground.

A planted court sits slightly off center, widening beside the living room and narrowing into a shaded passage toward the bedrooms. Its irregular shape prevents the house from being read all at once. On arrival, a perforated terracotta wall reveals only leaves and moving light. The kitchen opens to the broadest part of the garden, while a stair rises through its upper canopy. A small room for grandparents occupies the quiet front corner, close to the entrance but connected to family life by a covered seat. Work rooms at the rear borrow light from a second pocket court and can become bedrooms as the household changes.

The roof is separated into three shallow pitches, leaving ventilated slots above the central circulation. Warm air rises through these openings, drawing cooler air from planted areas and shaded floor surfaces. Rain is allowed to be visible. It drops from a chain into a stone basin, crosses the court in a narrow rill, and is stored below the garden for irrigation. During intense storms, raised thresholds and a porous ground layer give water several safe paths through the site. The system turns a seasonal risk into one of the home's recurring events.

Terracotta is used as screen, paving, and a warm internal lining. The bricks came from a regional kiln, including color-shifted batches that would usually be rejected. Their uneven tones register firing, weather, and hand placement. Lime plaster softens the private rooms; terrazzo made with broken roof tile marks the more public floor. Joinery is plantation-grown acacia, oiled rather than lacquered. The architecture depends on these ordinary materials being carefully repeated, not elevated into precious surfaces. With doors open, the courtyard belongs equally to room and garden. It gives the family a common center while allowing every generation a measured distance from it.