From the kucheh, only a wall.

A Qajar family house in old Yazd, built of mud brick around a courtyard and brought back to life one room at a time.

The street front: a long earthen wall with a pointed alcove and an old studded wooden door

The street gets a wall. The courtyard gets everything else.

In old Yazd a house gives the street almost nothing: a plain wall of mud and straw, an alcove, a door with iron studs. Everything else faces inward, around a courtyard that keeps the shade, the water and the everyday life of the house.

It's architecture made for the desert. The thick earth walls keep rooms cool in summer and snug on winter nights, and the light moves across the courtyard all day long.

The fountain in summer, surrounded by oleander, agave and flowering plants — The fountain in summer

A carved relief panel of a standing figure set in a pointed white niche — A relief in the living room

The restored courtyard: white walls, decorative brickwork and turquoise windows

Restored, not renovated.

We kept what the house already was: adobe walls, vaulted rooms, brick and plaster, and the way the rooms gather around the courtyard. What we added, from hot showers to heating, sits quietly within that.

The restoration was shortlisted for the Memar Award, one of Iran's leading architecture prizes.

Section drawing of Lari House from west to east: the living room and Chelcheragh either side of the sunken courtyard, the arched windows of Talar behind, and two cool rooms below ground — You step down from the *kucheh* into the courtyard, and further down again into the cool of the Sardab.

The geometry of the period.

Lari House comes from the Qajar period, when patterns for brick and tile were drawn out with compass and ruler. This page is from the geometry notebook of Mirza Jafar Khan Memarbashi, dated 1914, each figure pencilled first and then inked in magenta. It has nothing to do with our house; we simply fell for it, and borrowed its lines as a quiet thread through this site.

An open notebook on squared paper with a geometric pattern constructed in pencil and inked in magenta, numbered in Persian — From the geometry of Mirza Jafar Khan Memarbashi, 1914. Collection of Safa Niazmand, via Simurghnameh.

The ninefold star, constructed as in the notebook: divide the circle into nine, then join every fourth point.

The living room: a dusty-pink sofa beneath a wall of framed family photographs, a low pink table and a red rug in the morning sun

Breakfast, made here.

Fresh, local and whatever the season brings, served in the vaulted living room with the doors open to the courtyard when the weather is kind. Take your time. No one rushes here.

8:00 – 11:30every day

Pomegranates in a glazed bowl

Chelcheragh's pink bathroom

Talar's turquoise bathroom

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