Seattle architecture studio Wittman Estes drew on ancient Chinese landscape paintings and principles of garden design for this black house in Washington.
Wittman Estes designed Yo Ju Courtyard House for a plot on a busy street in the Clyde Hill neighbourhood that forms part of the wider metropolitan Seattle area. Yo Ju translates as "secluded living" in Mandarin Chinese, a key premise for the design.
A blackened wood fence screens the house from the street
One of the courtyards fronts the house to provide a barrier to the noise of and people on the street, while the other at the rear offers a space for the client's three children to play.
A stained-black cedar fence runs along the front Yo Ju Courtyard House, screening the street. The house, whose walls are also clad in blackened cedar, is set back behind the garden composed of grasses and a Japanese Maple tree interwoven with a concrete path. A concrete path cuts through grasses in the front garden
Glass walls at the back of the house meanwhile are intended to make it more open to a courtyard planted with a tree, and the back garden.
Because the property is flanked on either side by the gardens, its footprint takes up less than a third of its 10,125-square-foot (941-square-metre) site. Wittman Estes said it aimed to give the illusion that the compact interiors are larger by allowing vistas through the house.
The open-plan kitchen and dining room open onto the back patio
The concept draws on the technique of the t...