C Shaped Duplex From L Shaped Units

The typical subdivision house, 'set back' from its lot boundary lines on all four sides, was never terribly satisfactory once the fractional acre subdivision appeared. Where early subdivisions like Lewellen Park in West Orange NJ achieved privacy by way of the multiacre lot, privacy gave way to familiarity on the smaller lots of the mass market housing development. VRT proposes a return to the courtyard centric home of the antique world modified to fit the car centric realities of modern life. A decisive break with the lot line set back theory of residential architecture is essential if we're ever going to get anywhere. By so doing, by consolidating the four areas comprising front yard, side yards, and backyard, one has a very spacious outdoor area. By adopting a windowless party wall strategy with the house adjacent, one creates what qualifies for Christopher Alexander's notion of the private outdoor room - a room with walls on all sides, open at the top.

The units are L shaped. The wing perpendicular to the street has a solid wall on the back while getting lots of glass on the courtyard side. Each unit in the duplex has an open plan living dining and kitchen with 14 ft ceilings. The living area has banque style seating and a very large format projector TV screen. The dining space is set up for 18. The kitchen is open on one part with the cooking and pantry portion tucked away in the other. As drawn each unit has four bedrooms each with a bath. Flex space can be made into another bedroom, a playroom, or closed den. Below this flex space is a large space for storage, laundry, and mechanicals. A raised deck next to the street doubles as a 3 car carport. In the center of courtyard space is a pool. To the back of the courtyard is spa and outdoor living room. To the side is an outdoor kitchen and dining space. The lots are around 140 feet deep, 100 feet wide, approximately 1/3 acre. Each unit as drawn has around 4,000 sq ft of living space and 1,000 sq ft of storage / utility space.