Firm name: Farouki Farouki
Firm leadership: Caroline Farouki and Sabri Farouki
Location: New Orleans
Year founded: 2015
Firm size: We are five right now. When we look at what we’ve accomplished in seven years and how much work we have on our plates right now, we feel like we could easily be 12 or more.
Education: Caroline: Washington University in St. Louis, B.A. in environmental studies with a minor in architecture; SCAD, MFA in interior design; Sabri: Washington University in St. Louis, B.S. in architecture; Columbia University, M.Arch.
Experience: Caroline: Pompei C3, AvroKO; Sabri: SHoP, Diller Scofidio + Renfro, Bjarke Ingels Group
Firm mission: With our practice, we strive to design projects that bring joy and beauty to the world while progressing the fields of architecture and design. This means we work to innovate while making sure the process results in something thoughtful and aesthetically timeless. Increasingly these days, we are also aspiring to make good design accessible to the average person and not just other designers or wealthy patrons.
First commission: Maypop, a restaurant in New Orleans. The client took over the space of a previous restaurant, and the budget was tight, so we had to do a lot with a little. The project’s feature wall is a great example of combining a strong narrative with innovation to make something intriguing and beautiful.
Defining project: Our own home, because it was our first ground-up architecture and interior design project. It embodies simple but impactful solutions given tough constraints—in this case, strict historic district guidelines and the home’s very narrow lot.
Another important project: Ayu Bakehouse, also in New Orleans, is a recent project and a good example of pushing ourselves to try something new. The design is quite refined, but it was affordable to execute and appreciated by a broad range of people. We had been admiring the use of microcement in other projects, so we embraced the material as the primary design feature with expansive and monolithic counters throughout.
How did you come up with your firm name? Occam’s razor, put simply, states: “the simplest solution is almost always the best.” If we were both architects or both interior designers, we might not have chosen Farouki Farouki. But, since a mission of our practice is to provide integrated architecture and interior design, we leaned into the double name. We think it helps that it’s a unique name and one someone might remember, or sort of remember enough to Google us.
Who are your mentors and how have they influenced you? We both feel so fortunate to have worked for practices in New York led by principals that were, and still are, masters of and thought leaders in our field. (Our own practice has taught us to appreciate them even more than we did before.) We also remain heavily influenced by our colleagues from this period, many of whom support us. In addition, we support those who have left those New York practices and cheer for those who remain.
Most urgent policy question: In New Orleans, the lack of affordable housing versus the inundation of short-term rental housing in the market seems like the most pressing issue.
Biggest challenge in running a successful practice: Coming from a big design market and going to a smaller one is challenging in terms of hiring. Of course, there are many talented architects and designers in New Orleans, but we are finding that hiring anywhere is like looking for your perfect needle in a haystack, and there are simply way more needles to look for in bigger markets.
Design tool of choice: Our standard process is pretty consistent at this point. We hand sketch a lot early on. Our Concept Design and Schematic Design presentations have a lot of hand drawn perspective illustrations. In Schematic Design, we start modeling in Rhino 3D, and we basically keep a current Rhino model for the rest of the project to test design and visualize things. Of course, we use Revit for architecture. We’ve also gotten savvy and thorough using Revit for interior design—modeling millwork, finishes, doing coordination, etc.
This article appeared in ARCHITECT's March 2023 issue.
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