While Australia has never been more multicultural in its populace or outlook, the typical suburban Australian house has changed little in the last seventy five years to acknowledge this dramatic demographic change, with housing models still routed in the free-standing bungalow types imported from Britain and North America last century.

Borrowed Sky aimed to address this by exploring a true courtyard typology, more typical of south and east Asia, and yet to do so affordably, using common brick veneer and tiled roof material selections that ensure buildability, despite the atypical plan, and the possibility of easy adoption by a range of Australians, looking for housing types that are more culturally familiar.

Interestingly, the courtyard model presented regulatory challenges around thermal performance, as modelling systems are very much structured around centralized builds - not those that can be naturally lit from within.

Borrowed Sky is also unusual in Australian housing because it doesn't seek to look at a carefully framed rear garden adorned by a swimming pool or our across a dynamic landscape - its introspective, looking inward to capture an outdoor moment, framed by it's own courtyard facades, that has no direct link to the outside, beyond the sweep of sky it borrows.