the house for living: A Courtyard Complex That Treats Shelter, Learning and Belonging as One Plan

A shelter can end a night on the street without ending homelessness. A bed solves one problem; it does not teach a trade, build a friendship or give a young person a reason to stay. The quieter ambition of this project is to make the bed, the classroom and the shared courtyard part of the same building, so that the act of living somewhere becomes the act of growing up somewhere.

the house for living was designed by Yasamin Edraki and Sharareh Jokar, with Hani Mansurnejad as mentor, and entered in The SafeHouse. The team frames the house around three principles, living space, growth space and interaction space, and gives it a precise social purpose: housing homeless teenagers while offering them educational and job opportunities, so they can strengthen their relationships with each other, recognise their skills and make the best use of them.

A Low White Mass Folded Around Its Own Courtyards

From above, the complex reads less like a single building than a cluster of linked blocks, two and three storeys high, stepping in and out around several enclosed courtyards. A dark, taller volume sits near the centre, the one element that breaks the otherwise uniform white. The arrangement turns its back, gently, on the open tan ground around it and concentrates its life inward, which is an honest response to a programme that must feel protective before it can feel open.

The elevations confirm the strategy. On all four faces, long white walls are punctured by windows of varying size and position, scattered rather than gridded. The effect avoids the institutional rhythm that so often marks youth facilities; no facade announces dormitory or school. The rooflines rise and fall, and the dark central block appears on every elevation as a kind of anchor, a reminder that the whole complex gathers toward one point.

Bedrooms, Workshops and a Clinic Stacked Into One Diagram

The exploded axonometric is where the three principles become legible as rooms. Three floor plates separate into layers, each tagged with icons for library, classroom, workshops, public space, mother-child interaction, multipurpose hall, amphitheatre, bedroom, dining room, office, clinic and shop. Bedrooms recur on every level, while the learning and making spaces gather on the upper plate. Living is the constant; growth and interaction are woven through it rather than isolated in a separate wing.

That mixing matters for this user. A teenager leaving a bedroom passes through public space before reaching a workshop or a dining room, which makes encounter an everyday by-product of circulation. The presence of a shop and workshops alongside classrooms also points the plan toward work, not only schooling, matching the brief's stated aim of job opportunities.

Courtyards That Range From Garden to Gathering Room

The courtyards are not copies of each other. One holds two rectangular grass beds and mature trees, with people crossing a paved floor in afternoon shadow, a place to linger. Another is a tighter, fully paved room enclosed by tall white walls, its irregular windows looking down on the crowd like boxes at a theatre; it suits assembly and collective activity. A third introduces a colonnaded covered walkway, giving shade and a threshold between interior and open sky.

This gradient, from planted to paved, from open to roofed, gives residents choice about how exposed they want to be. For young people building trust, that choice is a design tool in itself: interaction space works best when it can be approached at one's own pace.

A Ground Plane Cut Into Strips of Path and Grass

Outside the enclosed courts, the landscape is organised as a patchwork of paved walkways slicing through sunken grass strips. The paths run in several directions toward the white facades, so the approach to the building is diffuse rather than funnelled through a single gate. Large trees break up the length of the walls and cast shade across the paving.

The pattern softens the edge between the house and its surroundings. Where the inner courtyards protect, these outer grounds invite, offering a middle territory where residents and passers-by might share space. It is a modest gesture, but it keeps the house from becoming a fortress.

Why This Project Matters

Housing for homeless youth is often designed as a sequence of separate services: a dormitory here, a training centre there, a clinic somewhere else. the house for living argues that these belong under one roof, organised by the relationships between them. By naming living, growth and interaction as its three principles and then distributing them across every floor, the project makes social development a spatial condition rather than a programme note.

Its courtyards carry the argument furthest. Varied in size, enclosure and planting, they offer teenagers a range of ways to be together, from crowded assembly to quiet shade. The architecture remains restrained, white walls and loosely scattered windows, but that restraint lets the open spaces do the work. The lesson for designers is clear: a safe house succeeds when its shared ground is as carefully considered as its beds.

View the Full Project

Project team

Designers: Hani Mansurnejad, Yasamin Edraki, Sharareh Jokar

Competition and award

Entry in The SafeHouse

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