Temple House

Pragmatically, the house design began by addressing universally non-negotiable factors, like access to northern light. The property has a northern street frontage, which would typically result in a single-volume house at the front of the property with south-facing openings leading to a light-compromised outdoor space at the back of the property. But here, rather than defaulting to that typical dynamic, it was inverted, with a house of multiple volumes weighted toward the back of the property, so the front yard and a central courtyard become the primary outdoor spaces, providing all-day light and garden aspects into multiple north-facing frontages. More intangibly, the house is intended to be perceived as the result of subtractive rather than additive processes – like some larger original object which has eroded back into some smaller trace of itself – to transcend any sense of newness in favour of the enduring and the eternal.