SYFORD

Project 05Stepped courtyard housing

Terrace Commons

Status
Concept design
Program
Stepped courtyard housing
Location
Casablanca, Morocco
Area
31,000 m²
Target year
2029

Terrace Commonsconcept design, axonometric study

The idea

Housing drawn as a hillside: four stepped terraces where every roof is the garden of the home above, and no apartment looks into a corridor.

The block steps down like cut terrain. Each band of housing stands one storey lower than the last, so every roof becomes the private terrace of the row behind — ground multiplied by section.

Corridors are replaced by open-air streets running along each terrace edge. Neighbours meet in daylight, not under fluorescent tubes.

The stepped envelope does the environmental work: winter sun reaches the deepest court, summer shade falls exactly where people sit. The form is the diagram of a good afternoon.