This ground floor apartment has a walled, rather dark courtyard (3.5m x 5m) with a magnificent ash tree and little privacy. It overlooked by an apartment building and has regular foot traffic passing. The clients were loathe to use the space as a result, however it provided their only access to the outdoors.
A translucent overhead screen of Soundwave acoustic panels diffuses conversation and offers both auditory and visual privacy.
To brighten the courtyard, yellow and black retro-reflective panels were used on the walls. The ground plane was made into a pond and covered with stainless steel mesh, bar the corners for water plants. The rippling water animates the walls with light reflections during the day, while at night, the light from the apartment interior infuses the courtyard with a sense of spaciousness.
Again with limited outdoor space, this apartment’s outside views were lifted above head height by opaque glass walls around the balcony and out almost all windows.
An area 17m x .7m along one entire length of the apartment was built up to window height with planter boxes and ponds populated with fish, while the screens behind them were covered with retro-reflective in a different patterns for each window. This area also provided cats with a playground to great effect.
For the balcony, a series of planter boxes and seats were constructed to giving maximum root area for the growing of vines on trellis’ for shade. The wall screens were again covered with a retro-reflective pattern.
