The courtyard house, a type of building that harks back thousands of years, is being reinterpreted as a module for high-density, heterogeneous urban districts. The Compact Courtyard House, generally with three closed exterior walls, takes up only very little space. With three to five storeys and up to four dwelling units, it can replace detached houses and even conventional residential buildings. The outside space that ordinary buildings need as spacing between each other is incorporated into Compact Courtyard Houses as high-quality courtyard space protected from outside viewing. Interior and exterior spaces can thus merge into a single spatial continuum with great utility value. Each flat has at least one such courtyard, as private as a bathroom. This resolves the dilemma of conventional types of construction in which density equals loss of privacy and stress caused by unwanted visibility. Going into great detail, the books present different types and variations for sites of different sizes and proportions. All can be readily combined to create urban ensembles and districts. Nevertheless, each building can remain largely autonomous on its own plot, thus ensuring a simple situation in terms of ownership. There are many possibilities of deploying this kind of building in the urban setting while only taking up little area: reidentification of existing residential areas, conversion of brownfield and leftover areas, new construction of mini-quarters and even larger urban districts. The book demonstrates the characteristics and extensive typologies of the Compact Courtyard House, providing planners with specific information and specifications for their work."--Publisher's website