Judges this year were Kevin Jarrett, owner of Space Furniture, Bryan Marshall, director of Bang Design, Madeline Lester, Federal President of the Design Institute of Australia and Judith O'Callaghan, Senior Curator of Decorative Arts and Design, Powerhouse Museum. The judges looked for design excellence, appropriate and creative understanding of the Australian domestic lifestyle, a creative and innovative response to the brief, appropriate and responsible use of materials and finishes with regard to environmental issues and consideration of manufacturability.

Rather than put something on the courtyard (as the design brief said to), I made the courtyard the object.  A three-sided courtyard is watered by a simple timer-operated irrigation system that very slowly fills from its lowest point.  The pavers on the floor are set at incrementally increasing heights so as the water fills the space it traces a special pattern.

The inspiration for this came the courtyards of Moorish Spain and from Giovanni Pannini's painting Piazza Navona Flooded (1756).  On summer weekends in the eighteenth century, the beautiful pedestrian Piazza Navona in Rome was flooded to create an artificial lake.

There are five states for the courtyard, the first of which is empty.  The other states are described in the following pages.