Project: 7510 Zimple
Architects: OJT
Location: New Orleans, Louisiana, United States
Photographs by: William Crocker
OJT has designed the 7510 Zimple project in New Orleans, Louisiana. This is in fact an extension project where the new building is linked to the primary residence in the adjacent spot, creating spaces that satisfy the needs of the family.
The project occupies a previously vacant parcel adjacent the clients existing home. The new home is a linked primary residence for their aging parents with a secondary rental unit. The expressed intent was to create a balance between a shared living experience between the families and a sense of autonomy. The primary unit occupies the entire ground floor, which is organized around a deeply recessed entry porch and an internal, private courtyard. Social program components — kitchen, living, dining — were position to respond to similar spaces of the existing home to create shared-use relationships. Whereas private spaces were located towards the extremities. The secondary unit occupies the street-side second floor, which is accessed from the shared entry porch, and intentionally mirrors the second-floor form of the existing home.
Since the home is considered an extension of the original residence there are no obvious, visual clues for entry, aside from an open carport, and is meant to be formally anonymous. The expressiveness comes from the manipulation of the traditional gabled roof form, which is shifted down the length of the home. Spaces are defined by the slanted and stepped ridge line, creating complex volumetric conditions, both expansive and confining, in reaction to specific program areas — high ceilings in living areas, compressed spaces in bedrooms. The massing and positioning of the home itself is meant to re-form exterior space, which produced containment for the rear, secluded yard and raised porch areas that expand interior uses.
Critically, the project reflects an ongoing effort to embrace and contextualize historic and conventional domestic types and spatial relationships through the idiosyncratic interpretation of form.
-OJT
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