ESSENTIALS
Firm Name: Eloueini Architecture
Principal: Ammar Eloueini
Headquarters: New Orleans, Louisiana
Accolades: Forbes Architecture’s “America’s Top 200 Residential Architects,” 2025; Forbes Architecture’s “America’s Best-in-State Residential Architects,” 2025
House Name: J-House
Location: New Orleans, Louisiana
Area & Layout: 2,200-square-foot main house and 800-square-foot guesthouse; 2 BR, 4 BA total
Architectural Photographers: Paul Costello, Michael Mantese (michaelmantese.com)
Faced with a typical 30-by-150-foot lot in the heart of flood-prone New Orleans, architect Ammar Eloueini took his cues from the region’s traditional dogtrot houses, fashioning a slender sequence of living spaces which he placed atop twin footings like a ballerina en pointe.
Then Eloueini gave the house a (literal) twist, rotating the middle so that the roof plane in front became the side wall in back. A fissure in the center accommodates a 53-foot skylight that illuminates the serpentine interior and compensates for the lack of side windows on the narrow lot. A floating white staircase ascends from the street level to the living area, where the kitchen hides behind a bank of flush cabinets and a window wall overlooks a garden planted atop the guesthouse in back.
“While modest with its size and footprint, it is very ambitious for a residential project,” concedes Eloueini, who designed the house on spec but ended up moving into it himself. The structure can withstand winds up to 180 mph, and is clad in a veil of termite-resistant charred cedar backed by an air pocket that helps keep the interior cool.
The architect says the unconventional design serves as a kind of litmus test for potential clients—most of whom seem to like it. The firm is already at work on other houses in Paris, Beirut and Tasmania, as well as the U.S.