The courtyard house has a fundamentally different view of the relationship of indoor space to outdoor space. In the patio or court yard home, the house itself is an interlocking combination of indoor and outdoor spaces that together make up the house. More importantly, the character and scale of the outdoor space is not significantly different than that of the indoor space. In a sense, the house is made up of a variety of rooms, some with roofs and others without. The patios or courtyards are simply rooms without roofs.
Courtyard houses provide an ideal prototype for desert communities.
In the colder periods of the year the courtyard, if properly oriented, provides a source of sun at the heart of the house, not at its perimeter. By maximizing the number of habitable rooms that face the courtyard, the major portion of the house is afforded an adjacent sunny outdoor space. Even in the desert communities where nighttime winter temperatures reach freezing, the daytime temperatures are sufficiently moderate that this courtyard can become an active and usable living space. It provides a safe outdoor play area for young children and a safe outdoor sitting area for adults and the elderly. In the hot season of the year, the courtyard can serve the same purposes in the morning and evening and, while often hot in the sunny areas during the day, the walls provide a portion of shade on at least some part of the courtyard throughout the day.