This project advocates for a housing typology that is affordable for the working middle class located in the Lower Garden district in New Orleans. While prompted to create efficient units, the proposal also seeks to create dignified domestic spaces to establish a high quality of life for residents. 

The existing site was already divided up into five identical parcels: the typical 30’ x 90’ parcel for a shotgun house. The proposal extrudes these traces into five masses, treating each as its own entity. Then, these remnant-shotguns are manipulated and shifted to generate a unique mass centered around a private courtyard.

While the form appears solid from the street views, this project invites users to pass through into its core to experience the lightness of the courtyard. Rather than being visible from the street front,

the core favors a more subtle tectonic language to introduce a distinct interior materiality contrasting the articulation of the facade. The internal delicacy contrasts the thick, massive shell. This strategy allows for both a unity of collectivized housing perceived at the street, as well as intimacy and autonomy experienced by each family from within.