Watch a site get woven.

Walk into an old adobe courtyard at three in the afternoon and the air feels different. It’s shaded, it’s still, and it’s several degrees cooler than the street. None of that is an accident.

A courtyard works as a small engine for passive cooling. At night, cool air settles into the open space, and the walls around it give up the heat they stored during the day. Heavy walls with plenty of thermal mass slow the swing between the hottest and coolest hours, so the rooms around the courtyard stay comfortable without much help from a machine.

We used the same idea on the Dry Creek Housing project, where twenty-four homes share three planted courtyards. The homes facing a courtyard need far less cooling than their neighbors on the street.

We took it further at Saltbrush Library, where a shaded reading courtyard and rammed-earth walls keep the main reading hall within a few degrees of 75°F through July.

Courtyards aren’t free. They take land, and they need careful drainage for the few days a year it pours. But in a climate like ours, few design moves do as much with so little.

A branch library built around a shaded reading courtyard. Rammed-earth walls, deep roof overhangs and a planted courtyard keep the main reading hall within a few degrees of 75°F through July, without mechanical cooling for most of the day.

The children’s room opens onto the courtyard through tall shaded doors, so story time moves outside from October to April.