As part of one of the first New Urbanist projects to integrate traditional planning principles with an advanced environmental protocol, the Civano New Town Patio Homes incorporate a variety of passive sustainable design and construction principles. Mainstream production housing is characterized by the stifling repetition of a few unit plans across large tracts of land; this project illustrates the proposition that single unit projects can generate both a rich variety of building fabric and memorable urban space.

The basic DNA of the project is a two-story, “L” shaped unit plan. Living rooms and dining rooms are located in the two patio-defining wings of the plan. The corner is given to the kitchen, bathroom and stairs. Two bedrooms and bathrooms occupy the second floor. Depending on the orientation of the unit, dwellings can be entered through the patio or directly into the living room. This single unit-type is serially repeated, mirrored and rotated to create volumetrically diverse pairs. The unit pairs are assembled, along with groupings of garages and their upper story granny flats, into two courts. The two courts define an oval park between them that serves both as a large window framing the Catalina Mountains and as a water-harvesting garden. The buildings are scaled proportionally to the park they help define. Pairs of units fronting it are massed to appear of a larger scale, featuring more expansive buildings and garden walls; the unit massing on the courtyards is more fragmented and varied. The compositional variety of both the park and the courtyards is enhanced through the addition of frontage elements onto the units, such as porches and loggias.