Stone Court

A retired couple asked for a house where nothing could be seen from the road and nothing of the road could be seen from the house. Stone Court is a single-storey ring of rooms around a raked gravel court, walled on all four sides in board-marked concrete.

The court is nine metres square and empty except for one black pine. Every room opens onto it through full-height sliding screens; when they are open in summer the house is effectively one room with a hole in the roof. In winter the screens are closed and the court becomes a lantern.

Materials inside are limited to Japanese cypress, plaster and blackened steel. The kitchen counter is a single slab of Shirakawa granite that took eleven people to install.