House with courtyards | christos pavlou architecture

On a large piece of land located a few kilometers outside of Nicosia, in an inhospitable and desolate landscape, the owners decide to build their "shelter". With no particular views, no neighborhood and not much greenery other than reeds along a dry ditch, the surrounding rural space does not lend itself to extroversion.  Between city and nature, isolation and sociability, we are invited to create comfortable and safe living conditions in a completely hostile environment.

The owners’ love for outdoor living and their desire to visit nature often together with the unwelcoming existing surroundings determined the typology of the house. A design approach that includes the typology of the traditional Cypriot rural house has been adopted as the beginning of the concept,  i.e. the private family life enclosed within its own boundaries with inner courtyards being the basic structural elements of the residence.

The dialectical relationship between indoor and outdoor space transforms the courtyard into a tool of architectural composition, creating interior spaces directly connected to their external environment. Patios and courtyards become integral parts of the design offering protected extensions for outdoor activities and delightful get together spots all year round.  Internal spaces and daily rituals are organised around courtyards and patios that are spread around the premises. They are all of different shapes and sizes but each with distinctive atmosphere and relatedness to outside enchasing thus the beauty of nature.      

The volume of this two-story house is divided into two parts integrating three large courtyards in-between and side by side. All the spaces, both on the ground floor with the living areas and on the upper floor with the 3 bedrooms, are planned in a linear arrangement and parallel to green courtyards. Each courtyard serves as an integral component of the interior space which influences dramatically the internal environment of the house. 

On the ground floor a double-height courtyard separates but at the same time unites visually and functionally the kitchen from the living room. Two other courtyards function as exclusive extensions of the living room and the kitchen respectively providing additional space for outdoor activities.

The idea of ​​the courts is extended to the upper floor where the bedrooms, on the west side, open onto protected but uncovered continuous long balconies. On this side a perforated vertical wall, which seems to float above the ground floor, protects the bedrooms from the western sun and shields the noise from an adjacent extremely busy main road. The enclosure here becomes the way of contact of the house with the private gardens below and the sky above ensuring its direct relationship with nature.

The boundaries begin to blur by bringing the green indoors through the atriums, the courtyard becomes a way of living. The experience of the residences revolves around the inner courtyards and gardens, enabling users to enjoy the magic of the evolution of life, the changes of light, vegetation and the seasonal colors of nature "Light, green, air, the three main elements of urban planning", Le Corbusier.