European architecture question(s)

[ritaxis]

So you've got a block of buildings with an open space in the middle. It might be buildings from the Middle Ages that just survived till the present day, or it might be ones from later on, but you have the same thing, tenements (or rowhouses or apartments, whatever) all tightly closed around a space in the middle.  In back of all those buildings, whatever direction you come from.  What do you call that space?

I've been calling it the yard, though in my brief European forays I do not seem to have noticed that anybody in particular seems to think of it as their yard. When I was in Prague I didn't visit any apartments in a block like that, I just passed by them, and I could rarely see through the passageways into the (yards).  The passageways clearly went right through the buildings to the back, but they were usually closed off by gates.  The few yards I could see looked kind of underutilized: not landscaped, but not full of either stuff people were using or garbage either.  I saw a couple of trees, but they looked like weed trees. 


For that matter, what do you call a block like that?  Sometimes it looks like the whole thing is one thing, other times they are obviously not.  And what do you call those passageways?

I did get to visit a very pleasant Soviet-era apartment building (panalok), and an apartment carved out of a neo-baroque former film studio, and a dormitory(kolej) in  a former Soviet-era motel.  So I have seen what some of the cheap housing in Prague looks like, but not all of it.

On another front, I had my last physical therapy of this run (and no doubt I will have more of them in the future), and while I took today off work as a preemptive move, I did not stay up all night with pain after the deep tissue massage.  Rather, I woke up now and then to a highly annoying but by no means unbearable single point of pain.  Win!

Comments

[del-c.livejournal.com]

In English we call it a courtyard, which Wikipedia implies is a redundant word, "court", "yard", and "hortus" (garden) all meaning the same thing, an enclosed space surrounded by the building it's in. My company's head office is called "X Court", which made sense as the architect had designed it to surround a space, but then they called another office "Y Court", when it doesn't!

The meaning of "court" that is "legal hearing" comes from when the king used to go round the country hearing cases: the hearing was set up in a courtyard owned by the local big man. So does the meaning of "court" that means "where the king and his entourage are hanging out".

[pantryslut.livejournal.com]

I'd call it a courtyard.

The passageways are alleys. If I try to think of a word for the whole block I start reverting to Spanish.

[joycemocha.livejournal.com]

Courtyard; possibly also a commons or common area if it seems too big to be a courtyard.

I've also heard them called

[dragonet2.livejournal.com]

closes, or Mews. These at least seem to be used as names on maps.

Re: I've also heard them called

[ritaxis.livejournal.com]

Is that what those are? I always thought a mews was just a row of buildings. And a close -- I didn't know but I thought it had something to do with woodlands and buildings in conjunction somehow.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

A mews is, or rather was, a building where hawks were kept. Later these were often converted, and now people live in them. A close is anything enclosed... but I'd call your square a courtyard for sure.

[del-c.livejournal.com]

A mews used to be a place for keeping falcons. When that became less popular, the spaces (which generally took the form of a passageway from a row of buildings out into the surrounding streets) were repurposed as stables, and then with the advent of the car, as bijou urban dwellings. So to live in a place in London described as "Mews" is to live somewhere nice and secluded, maybe old, in the middle of the city. As with "Court" above, you often can't trust property developers not to simply slap the name on to something they want to sell you, that doesn't really have the history or qualities the word is associated with.

Re: I've also heard them called

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

A close is a cul-de-sac: a road that leads nowhere other than to a clump of houses.

Mews is a name used for the houses around a yard, not the courtyard itself.

[madwriter.livejournal.com]

Agreeing with all the above, though I've also seen such places half-lovingly / half-sarcastically nicknamed "plazas" by the residents. :)

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

In German, it's 'Hof' or 'Hinterhof' - I'd use courtyard as the English term. (Hinterhöfe in large cities were notorious for sprouting futher buildings which then had no light at all and which were generally unhealthy places to live.)

'yard' on its own often refers to one's backyard - an area associated wih an individual house, usually fenced, paved, and often used to simply dump rubbish (as well as, in previous times, containing an outhouse, coal bunker, wood store, shed...) and, of course, the rubbish bin as well as somewhere you dump ashes.

The area outside the row of houses where I live (ten houses in all) where we park our cars and have gardens is definitely a 'yard' - it's open and fairly large.

(I'd probably be more likely to use courtyard if it's paved and entirely enclosed.)