The brief asked for four bedrooms and a pool. We built four bedrooms, a pool, and a nine-metre courtyard with nothing in it, which the clients queried twice during construction and have not mentioned since.
The walls are load-bearing laterite quarried within forty kilometres, left unrendered inside and out. There is no air conditioning in the living spaces. In May, at two in the afternoon, the courtyard is eight degrees cooler than the road outside.
We drew the section before the plan. Everything else followed from where the shade fell.
