We designed this courtyard house on a roughly 330m² (100 tsubo) plot halfway up a hill in a quiet residential district. Since the site features a height gain of 2 meters, we adopted a split-level floor format across a north building and a south building to fit with the topography. The plan was to create a courtyard house that it was impossible to see directly from outside, and we opted for a very private layout in which every room offers a view of the serene garden. Because there is enough natural light coming in from the garden, we made the south-facing façade into a “closed” design with no windows of any kind. We wanted to make an exterior that conjures tranquility and reticence, at the same time as the vertical tongue and groove solid-wood siding with equally spaced battens provides a visual accent.