Courtyard Homes — Nominal Architecture & Design

Courtyard Townhomes

This speculative housing scheme imagined three diversly sized townhomes arranged around a common courtyard. We were tasked with blending individuality with a collective in a single structure that could pencil in an area with very high land costs.

Cambridge, MA

Concept Design

3 Homes

2020

The site, located in West Cambridge sites at the intersection of several restrictive zoning overlays. This proposal, as with almost all new housing, would be a non-conforming use and form. The speculative housing project challenged these overlays, both in use and aesthetic. It situates three family sized homes on a typical single-family lot.

Urban Context Plan

Restrictive Zoning Elements

Block Site Plan

No. 1

Creating a fertile commons through shared green space

No. 2

Enabling diverse cultures and family shapes through a diverse architecture

No. 3

Filling the missing middle gap in housing that exists for homeownership opportunitites

The project was centered around three main priorities: creating a shared and productive landscape, creating diverse housing options, and creating smaller homes.

These all reflect missing elements in the for-sale housing market as it stands.

A starting point for the design was to combine existing residential typologies in the neighborhood into a hybrid building type.

Three townhomes scale in size to enable diversity in the development—both for size and layout.

Each townhome has a unique circulation strategy that reflects its orientation. Layouts range from loft, two, and three story structures.

The massing pushes each volume to the edge to maximize the internal courtyard. A singular roof broken into three parts prioritizes solar aspect in courtyard.

Homes maximize daylight to living spaces while preserving privacy for sleeping spaces.

Ground Floor Level

Level 2

Level 3

Roof Plan

The courtyard becomes a semi-private buffer zone between the kitchen and dining spaces of each unit, offering mediated enclosure.

Courtyard plantings and adjascent kitchen/dining spaces

Section perspective of the courtyard

Window to room strategy

The window and cladding strategy ensures each opening type corresponds to its relevant interior program. The exterior in response has a more loose appearance than of typically stacked window bays.

In contrast to typical New England housing the project inverts the transparency of the front versus side elevations, which allow more usable light rather than prioritize ornament on the street.

The building appears both as three seperate homes and a collective structure. It allows each family to maintain a direct entry and a sense of ownership while efficiently forming density out of a single lot.

Kitchens for each home are on distinct levels to respond to each family type. Each share a common ribbon window motif to allow cross ventilation.

Gathering, reading, sleeping, and working spaces are more compact and naviagate around the buildings in section, always with few large openings to direct views but maintain usable wall space.

The homes in contrast to their colonial neighbors

Homes among the urban canopy in Fall

Backside of the homes as seen from a neighbors yard