Compact Courtyard Housing. Handbook For A New Building Type For Sustainable High-density Urban Development

Thousands of years old, the courtyard house building type was reinterpreted as a building block for urban quarters of high density and heterogeneity. The resultant “compact courtyard house”, with its low height and up to four living units, has a very small footprint and can replace detached houses and other conventional dwelling types. Outside space is integrated into the buildings as a private courtyard space, thus merging interiors and exteriors into a spatial continuum with high residential value. The book describes this comprehensive typology in eight basic concepts from which space-saving compact courtyard houses can be derived, or even combined to form urban ensembles.