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Braid Hills Courtyard House

Braid Hills Courtyard House

A low concrete house wrapped around a walled courtyard, so that the wind goes over the top and the garden gets the sun.

Houses

Strata courtyard 1

Strata courtyard 2

Strata courtyard 5

Strata courtyard 3

Strata courtyard 4

The plot is on the exposed side of the hill, where the south-westerly arrives with nothing to slow it. The answer is an old one: a courtyard. The house is a single storey of in-situ concrete around a walled garden, and the rooms look inward to the courtyard and outward, through deep openings, to the hill.

The concrete sits on a plinth of whinstone from the quarry two miles away, and the courtyard walls are the same stone laid dry, so the garden already looks older than the house.

We are on site now. The roof went on in June and the first frost will tell me whether the courtyard works as drawn.

Project info

Location: Braid Hills, Edinburgh
Year: 2025
Area: 196 m²
Structure: In-situ concrete, whinstone plinth
Status: On site

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Practice

Isla Renwick is an architect working in stone, brick and timber from a small studio in Edinburgh, on houses, studios and the occasional civic room across Scotland.

Contact

[email protected]
+44 131 496 0847
14 Candlemaker Row, Edinburgh EH1 2QE

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Sheet

Rev C · Issued for information

© 2026 Isla Renwick, Architect. All drawings remain the property of the practice.

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