living-writing: February 2016

Courtyard House

Here is yet another version of the courtyard house that I keep returning to. There must be some psychological reasons for this obsession of mine--something like a longing to live in a temperate climate which facilitates moving and living in and out of doors with as little reliance on air-conditioning or heating as possible. The freedom of being able to throw your doors and windows wide open, stepping over a barely perceptible demarcation between indoors and outdoors, with perhaps only a 7-inch high threshold separating the two, seems like a state of innocence that has been lost forever for me along with my childhood. I remember my grandmother's tiny row house in southern Taiwan where there was no barrier between indoors and outdoors, where one stepped over the threshold right unto the busy pedestrian street. As far as I can remember, I was totally unaware of any discomfort about the heat, noise, dust, or insects invading the house when I visited my grandmother after school. Nowadays I can hardly put up with a tiny moth that accidentally flies into the house, or allow dust to accumulate on the furniture or a bit of dirt on the floor. Since when have I lost the ability to feel at ease letting a little nature inside the house? It seems that we gradually remove ourselves from the elements and at the same time nature becomes more and more something we have to contend with and contain. In my case, the process of distancing from nature started with my father's moving his young family from his ancestral home into a small house of his own in order to provide us with better living conditions. Our house was set back from the street protected by a tall masonry wall with a gate in the middle. Inside the gate was a tiny bit of garden with a fish pond which my father built. The front door was equipped with a separate screen door and all the windows were screened. There were window A/C units in most rooms, a detached kitchen over a covered breezeway with a water closet on one side and a bathroom on the other. The house was primitive, compared to modern standards, but it was an immense improvement from my grandmother's house.

For people living in developing countries in the tropics or subtropics in early 20th Century, the kind of improvements in living condition which one strived for could be something as simple as having mosquito nets over one's bed. This then transforms into the aspiration to have screened doors and windows to keep out unwelcome bugs, and eventually progresses into a desire for fixed, triple-glazed windows and heavily insulated walls, which we have now, and which effectively trap us year-round inside a highly conditioned, unnatural environment, which we call home. We have practically barricaded ourselves inside a strong box, to keep off the elements, critters, and alas, other people as well.

Now about this courtyard house. The main feature of the design is a big opening carved out from the middle of the block, allowing natural light to stream in and air to freely circulate inside the house, with the porch roof extending indoors as a continuous light shelf all around the courtyard. The organization of the various spaces is self-evident, consisting of a more public wing on the one side and a more private one on the other, with a communal dining space like a bridge between the two. Both the occupants and guests enter the house from the front door through a covered walkway--a rarity nowadays, as most houses have their garages directly connected with the house and people rarely ever use their front doors.