The site had a road to the east and party walls everywhere else. Putting windows on the outside would have meant looking at somebody's wall or listening to traffic, so we stopped trying and turned the house inward.
A thirty-foot courtyard sits in the middle. Every habitable room opens onto it, which means every room gets morning light, cross ventilation and a view of something green, without a single window facing the road.
The upper floor is pulled back on the south edge so the court still gets sun in December. A shallow pool along the west wall cools the air before it crosses the house in the afternoon.
The brick is from a yard nine kilometres away and is left unplastered inside the court, so the wall records the weather instead of hiding it.