What happens to the suburban single-family home as cities become dense and privacy becomes limited? It must look inward. Through a series of thresholds from opaque to transparent, Yo-Ju Courtyard House, which means “secluded living” in Mandarin Chinese, embraces the future of suburban density by establishing a private experience despite being adjacent to a busy arterial street in the Clyde Hill neighborhood of Bellevue.

Home to an active family with three young children, the architects addressed the challenges of future density—the danger of increasing traffic with playful children, noise pollution, and decreased amount of natural vegetation—by having the house look inward instead of outward. The house draws upon the traditions of “Chinese courtyard and garden design, along with the ideas underlying Chinese landscape painting techniques, to rethink the traditional single-family home” says architect Matt Wittman.

Designing around Courtyards. The design is organized in three elements: 1) the entry courtyard, which is screened from busy NE 24th Street; 2) the house living volume, which presents an opaque facade to the street, and a transparent facade to the rear; and 3) the garden courtyard, which is composed of a secluded zone in the rear yard where children can play freely. The courtyard house connects space with nature. The entry courtyard functions as a threshold between the street and the interior. A black-stained, tight knot cedar fence marks the next transition as a concrete path moves through a bed of grasses and a Japanese Maple tree. Inside the secluded garden courtyard, all signs of urban life disappear within the oak casement of the kitchen, concrete flooring, and floor-to-ceiling sliding doors.