Californian architecture and design studio Breland–Harper cultivates privacy and a resolute garden connection in a 1920s Spanish Revival.
The Spanish Courtyard House is home to Breland–Harper co-founders Michael Breland and Peter Harper, who reworked the original home located in Silver Lake, California, while adding a sympathetic new two-storey extension. Breland and Harper designed the home to be open and inviting, with a central courtyard that also fosters privacy and serenity. “In every home we build for ourselves and every project we embark on for a client, we hope to cultivate a measure of serenity. For us, it is foundational to what a home is,” Harper says.
What was once a cramped space, the kitchen is now located in a new wing, which Harper describes as the home’s social hub. The design draws inspiration from European country houses.
Designed for entertaining family and friends, the central courtyard connects all of the public spaces in the home.
“We would choose a beautifully placed window over most paintings,” Harper says.
As one of three core design ideas, an indoor-outdoor connection was challenged by the compact site and the original 1920s home’s vernacular. The home had ‘punched’ windows, concise openings and a floor plan that didn’t prioritise the existing rear garden, with just one door that led to the outdoor space. Breland–Harper relocated the front entrance, allowing the small side yards and front garden to become ‘fully resolved garden rooms’ with ‘distinctive identities and functions’. “Previously, the home had two gardens, front and back, while the new plan has six,” Breland says, with fourteen doors now leading to the different outdoor spaces.
When discussing the role of the central courtyard in the home’s design, Harper describes it as an organising device embedded in the house’s flow and choreography. The courtyard also nods to California’s architectural history. “The courtyard is a threshold space, so perfectly suited to our climate and our needs,” Harper reflects. The courtyard space facilitates a dialogue between all of the home’s public spaces.
Most of the home’s original details were lost in a previous, unsympathetic renovation, but the original timber ceilings were retained.
The home features local, reclaimed materials such as terracotta flooring, which further dissolves the boundaries between inside and outside.
Designed as the social heart of the home, the kitchen is now located in a new wing and draws visual cues from European country houses. The living room is located adjacent to the kitchen. It flows directly onto the courtyard through floor-to-ceiling glass doors, which Breland says allows the space to fluctuate between an intimate retreat and an indoor-outdoor terrace.
Privacy was another core design idea. Given the density of the neighbourhood, views could only be captured from an upper floor. This made way for a two-storey addition, which, in turn, provided the garden with a sense of seclusion.
For Harper, additions can be more complicated than a new build because they need to be sensitive to the existing structure, its quality, and whether anything about it actually works. In the case of the Spanish Courtyard House, the addition was to “fully realise the home’s architectural composition into a more compelling whole”. “The new wing was seen as a grafting on to the old – an extension of it, completing the original idea in our time, while satisfying the needs of the present such as a large kitchen to gather and to entertain, proper service spaces and storage, a main suite, and closet after closet.”
Serenity was the last core design idea. “Simplicity breeds serenity—serenity breeds simplicity,” Harper says. Natural, local and reclaimed materials were used to reinforce the tone and atmosphere, working in tandem with space, proportion, and sunlight. At the same time, formal symmetry and strong axes open up long vistas, circulation, and flow. The elevation between the addition and the original structure was negotiated through a series of thresholds that allow the home to unfold across different levels.
Breland and Harper have created a sense of place in the Spanish Courtyard House by mediating between past and present, honesty and refinement, and most importantly, inside and outside.
The two-storey addition created a secluded, central courtyard.
“Cultivating a courtyard was a means of controlling the experience—what was screened and what was borrowed visually—as well as defining or partially containing an effusive urban garden,” Harper says.
