BIGyard garden courtyard, Berlin
Special Prize Living Environment - LA Prize 2013
The BIGyard is a small courtyard that becomes BIG in use and effect through clever design. In the overdetermined residential environment - tension between privacy, need for quiet, pressure of use and maintenance - the project authors dare to play on an inherently small courtyard with a variety of themes. This usually leads to a situation in which, for all the good will, no design intention can be discerned. Not so in this case: a disciplined use of spatially effective elements such as loosely scattered gleditsia, raw tree trunks and Buckminster Fuller-like tree houses creates a stable design framework within which a variety of qualities can playfully develop.
