This house for a young family is situated in a small town within a rural area of New Zealand and is set amongst retail and commercial buildings in the town's business district. The owners required that the house be a family home with provision for a small art studio and gallery, incorporating a coffee kiosk, and that it provide privacy from the street but openness to the outdoors.

The home is set around three courtyards, with a brick perimeter wall providing privacy to the courtyards and the house interiors. The interior and exterior spaces are conceived as part of a single, continuous open-plan composition in which the spaces for domestic activities are loosely separated by walls or 'volumes': the extent of separation being determined by the degree of privacy required. Private bathrooms, for example, are completely enclosed but open to the sky, whereas the design studio is completely open to a courtyard and only partially separated from the bedroom areas.

Programatically, the project reverses the contemporary western suburban model of a freestanding house centred on its site surrounded by empty space—usually lawn; instead, the interior spaces are moved to the edge of the site and the external spaces are moved inside. By doing this the exterior courtyard spaces become internalised and thus an integral part of the open-plan layout of the house.

Structural and cladding materials are plain in appearance and detail, and are similar to those visible on neighbouring buildings. Concrete and plaster are used on the floor and walls, respectively, and provide a robust and simple appearance. Brick is used to form the wall which wraps around the perimeter of the site, providing an appearance of solidity and a sense of protection from the adjacent public lane and footpath. Corrugated metal roofing clads the top and sides of the roof volumes, providing a plain, economical appearance; whilst timber boards clad a number of walls and objects (storage cupboards, cabinets, bathrooms), providing a soft, warm and crafted appearance.

The house, whilst small in area, provides a visually spacious home through its appropriation of exterior spaces as interior space. Though located within a busy urban environment, it is a home which provides both privacy and openness for its occupants.