2019 AIA California Residential Design Merit Award

2020 Orchid Award Architecture

2015-2017
San Diego, CA.

The role of the courtyard is described as a space that “leads man unconsciously to fall in an atmosphere of spontaneous meditation without any effort and with reduced nervous tension…Such a space helps so much in the development of personality and in avoiding standardization of the mind.”
The Louisiana is a building that is designed with this concept as the seed for its spatial organization. The massing of the building revolves around a series of outdoor rooms, or courtyards, which serve as a dissolvent for the structure as it projects upwards, leaving functional voids at every story that become as important to the dwellings as any of their interior rooms.
The courtyards and outdoor rooms are private and intimate, and seamlessly connect to the interior spaces of the dwellings. They are meant to harness repose and quietness, and to act as an escape from the pressures of the outside environment, work, or the daily routine. Such a quality is a much-needed entity that is often forgotten in the common apartment buildings of our urban environment.

Photography: Onnis Luque