Gorgeous courtyard house in Hawaii is an indoor-outdoor dream

When you live in a place like Hawaii, indoor-outdoor living takes on a whole new meaning. In a nod to loose clusters of traditional Hawaiian villages, the Makani’ Eka House from Walker Warner Architects on Hawaii’s Big Island comprises four structures that flow around a courtyard, walkways, and patios, ensuring residents have plenty of excuses to venture outdoors.

The firm, which collaborated with Philpotts Interiors and David Y. Tamura Associates for interior design and landscape architecture, respectively, wanted to modernize Hawaii’s traditional hale shelters—timber homes that are covered by thatched roofs stretching all the way to the ground.

Matthew Millman

“The composition of canted steel columns, steep-pitched roofs, and rhomboidal window and door openings represent a contemporary interpretation of early Hawaiian shelters,” said Greg Warner, a co-founder of the firm and the lead architect for the project. Warner grew up in Hawaii and is influenced by both indigenous Hawaiian architecture and preeminent Hawaiian modernist Vladimir Ossipoff.

The deconstructed layout is divided into four spaces: a recreation room and garage, guest suite, master bedroom, and communal living spaces. All of the structures are built from red cedar and feature polished concrete floors, asymmetrical pitched ceilings, and wide expanses of window. They feel almost like pavilions, which is exactly what you’d want from a home in paradise.

Matthew Millman

Matthew Millman

Matthew Millman

Matthew Millman

Matthew Millman

Matthew Millman