Bugolobi Courtyard ApartmentsBugolobi Courtyard Apartments

Bugolobi has densified fast, and mostly badly: plot-filling blocks with a strip of parking at the front and no shared outdoor space at all. This scheme puts the parking underground and gives the plot's whole centre back as a garden.

The courtyard does the work

Four sides of accommodation, three storeys, wrapped around a 28 by 18 metre planted courtyard with three mature mahogany trees retained from the original garden. Every apartment has its front door on a gallery overlooking the courtyard and its living room on the outside face — so residents pass each other daily without anyone's living room being on show.

Detail that lasts

Galleries are wide enough (2.2m) for a chair and a plant, and are roofed. External walls are fair-faced Kajjansi brick with recessed mortar joints; there is no render to crack and no paint to redo every three years. Window reveals are 300mm deep, which shades the glass and keeps rain off the frames.

• 24 apartments: 8 × one-bed, 12 × two-bed, 4 × three-bed
• Single-level basement, 28 bays plus bicycle store
• Courtyard drains to a soakaway and a 40,000-litre harvesting tank
• Solar hot water on every unit

Completed in 2022. Four years on, the courtyard planting has closed over and the building is quieter and cooler than the day it was handed over — which was the point.