This story is part of our annual look at the state of American design. This year, we’re highlighting work that shines through an acrimonious moment—and makes the case for optimism.

On a sticky summer night in New Orleans, in our candy-apple-red dining room, my husband, his life partner, and I ate red beans and rice and scribbled lighting cues on a script for an adaptation of the 1980s cult horror/comedy flick Evil Dead II. That fall we would stage it in a motel pool roiling with synchronized swimmers, puppets, and trapeze performers. The mezzanine above us brimmed with costumes. A fog machine, PA system, and strobe—among many other lights—awaited deployment. Soon, in the double-height living room crowned with an aerial-rig-ready vaulted ceiling, we’d teach cast members how to set them up and take them down for each of our eight shows.

This labor of love had nothing to do with our day jobs. My husband, Philip Stalcup, is an ER physician; his longtime partner, Elise (her name has been changed at her request), is an environmental attorney; and I’m a news reporter on the local crime beat. But we all share a passion for theater. And we also share a house that both suits our individual lifestyles and allows us to pursue our passion.

I began dating Phil in January 2020 after meeting him at the Canal Street location of NOLA Pole & Aerials, the studio where we train. We’d both been active in parades and with local theatrical troupes for years. He and Elise, an aerialist and a water ballet enthusiast, had recently bought a double lot in the St. Roch neighborhood for $56,798 from the New Orleans Redevelop-ment Authority. They did so with the goal of creating two autonomous yet connected residences that could house friends, lovers, and collaborators, accommodating their 30-year partnership as it shifted from romantic to primarily artistic.

“This interplay of light, color, and movement aligns to the clients. They are plural in who they are as people and the things they engage in.”
—James Carse, architect

“Phil and Elise were looking for a space to create a home compound—a place for them to bring together a lot of friends to celebrate in an event city,” says James Carse, an architect whom they knew through a mutual friend who cofounded the firm Alao, which designed the house. “There was the dream, at one point, to have a bunch of tiny homes around a central gathering space.”

That dream proved out of reach for a duo with a $450,000 budget. But its conceptual through line—side-by-side, mirror-image dwellings—is well known in New Orleans via its many double shotgun houses. Carse and his business partner, Aya Maceda, riffed on that vernacular when they designed the 2,360-square-foot Pop! House during the height of the pandemic in 2020.

The exterior’s bold, polychromatic palette draws from New Orleans’s colorful Caribbean influences and the four-color paint patterns that are a signature of the city. The array of hues, a lurid shift from bruise purple to petrochemical pink, reminds me of the nearly neon incandescence in a Louisiana sunset. I wasn’t surprised when Elise revealed that a burlesque performer named Vivacious Miss Audacious had weighed in on the selection. “People stop to say they refer to it as the circus house,” Elise says.

Completed in August 2021, the Pop! House can feel like a circus, depending on how many people are living there. At one point, Phil, Elise, her boyfriend, Sam—a firefighter turned actor who stars in Evil Dead II and set himself ablaze for last year’s water ballet adaptation of Carrie—and I were all under its shingled roof. Though we had our conflicts (I didn’t appreciate it when Sam ate my leftover pizza, and Elise didn’t relish my two a.m. renditions of Broadway tunes), the house’s use of square footage never caused one.

That’s because its triptych of spaces comprises a west wing for communal activity (cooking, dining, watching movies, working on our theatrical events), an east wing for solitary pursuits (sleeping, studying, bathing), and a glass breezeway connecting the two with a deck on either side. In the east wing, which is designed essentially as a pair of duplex apartments, a second-story office tops Elise’s bedroom and bath, while Phil’s ground-level bedroom, soundproofed and painted black to support his night-shift schedule, connects via spiral staircase to his personal area above, a river-facing room that’s perfect for watching storms (a penchant of his). Split by a central staircase, each two-story space has its own entrances on each floor.

“At one point, a friend—someone most people would see as a guest—was starting to have design input. But that reflected the idea that it was a communal place.”
—James Carse

“We didn’t deliver one house—we delivered a little village,” Maceda says. “It’s the type of house that allows for other types of living situations to exist. That’s why I love this project. We’re going away from the traditional notion of a dream house for a traditional nuclear family.”

The home’s skylights offer an escape route to the roof during a worst-case hurricane scenario. I didn’t ask Carse and Maceda whether they had considered that function, but as a Katrina survivor, I have. I’ve also considered how beautifully the space, now outfitted with solar panels to withstand New Orleans’s frequent power outages, could serve as a refuge for neighbors and loved ones during hurricanes. Elise’s bedroom and Phil’s room each hold an extra bed, and the costume room has one as well.

Brand-new light stands clutter the glass hallway as both the water ballet and Tropical Storm Francine—predicted to be a hurricane when it makes landfall on the Louisiana coast—loom. Elise and Sam, who now live in another house, will shelter here if things get bad for New Orleans. And if the storm turns out to be a miss, we’ll stick to our regular tech rehearsals, which recently included a lighting workshop in the living room. No matter what happens, the show will go on—and this house will help facilitate that.

Project Credits:

Architect of Record, Interior Design, and Lighting: Alao / @alao_design

Builder: JLV / @jlvconstructionnola

Structural and Civil Engineering: Batture / @batture_eng

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