Courtyard House

Courtyard House is a prefabricated, off grid, modern interpretation of the traditional Australian rural home, developed in collaboration with FABPREFAB. The dynamic arrangement of these spaces provides a strong connection to the ever changing landscape.

In the quietly radical world of residential architecture, CHROFI has made a practice of resisting the cookie-cutter. Their Courtyard House—part experiment, part provocation—is a prefabricated structure that insists on being anything but prefabricated in spirit. Conceived with a rare fusion of pragmatism and poetics, the project reimagines the home as both sanctuary and statement: low-impact, high-function, and uncommonly beautiful.

 Its plan is deceptively simple—a modernist nod to the ancient typology of the courtyard—yet its execution brims with nuance. Light moves through its open interiors like a tide, slipping from room to room, blurring the distinction between inside and out. This porosity, both spatial and philosophical, speaks to CHROFI’s deeper aim: to reframe the relationship between house and landscape, person and place.

The organisation of flexible living areas provide an unexpected sense of space in a building normally dictated by narrow proportions. 

Unsurprisingly, accolades followed. In 2020, Courtyard House received commendations from the House Awards for both Sustainability and Best New House Under 200 m². 

It went on to win the Energy Efficiency category at the Master Builders Association Awards and was named among Dwell magazine’s nine best prefabs of the year—a nod to its rare achievement: a prefab with soul.

More than a prefab, Courtyard House by CHROFI is a quiet manifesto—fusing design elegance with environmental intelligence. Awarded and internationally recognised, it redefines small-footprint living through a poetic interplay of light, land and form.