Leopold Banchini Architects

Dodged House

MANUFACTURERS
Much More Than A Window, Ofa, Roca, Sanindusa, Teka, Valvo

PHOTOGRAPHS
Dylan Perrenoud

AREA
94.0 m2

YEAR
2019

LOCATION
Lisboa, Portugal

CATEGORY
Houses, Renovation

The crisis that hit Portugal ten years ago has produced an incredible density of abandoned spaces.

The two main cities, Porto and Lisbon, offered a landscape of ruins and closed buildings that charmed an international community looking for a southern romanticism.

Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud

Since then the two cities have acted and reacted to renew their historical centers and a good quantity of these abandoned houses have been renovated with a general undeniable quality, probably due to the sensitive and cultivated approach of Portuguese architects in general.

This landscape of closed buildings was featured by numerous opaque facades, hiding the interiors as if the life of those buildings had disappeared or was in a frozen state, waiting for better times to open the windows again and let the sunshine in. Streets with no windows, faces without eyes.

Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud

The Dodged House in Lisbon pays a double tribute: on one hand to Irving Gill’s architecture.

The very particular modernity that he established as the basis of his practice seems to perfectly echo the Portuguese context (the same way as Gill’s architecture was understood to develop from the Missions in California).

On the other hand, as a trace of the time in which the Dodged house was designed and built, it has preferred to keep her eyes closed and opaque façade and has bet on a less marketable feature, space, void, interior volume that refuses efficiency of land use.

Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud

Within a rather small plot (around 40 m2 ground floor, 94 m2 in total) the Dodged house has privileged a strong section and a contemplative void, proposing a diversity of interior-exterior spaces that extend into a courtyard.

The three bedrooms develop on four superposed floors. Low-cost construction techniques and simple materials are specifically chosen to build an affordable dwelling.

Locally sourced tiles and stones are used for the furniture, walls and floors. The rough cement blocks used for the shell meet custom made simple metal work.

Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud

The section in steps generates a generous full height living space in the small volume, in direct communication with all the floors.

Towards the street, the pre-existing historical façade is left as found; a reminder of Lisbon’s fast changing city centre.

Evidently, the project responds as well to a complexity of functional requirements that has turned the house into a “machine à habiter”, playing again, quite deliberately and strongly with the history of modernism and its inhabitable typologies.

Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud


Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud


Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud
Dodged House
© Dylan Perrenoud


Dodged House
Northeast elevation
Dodged House
Southwest elevation
Dodged House
Northeast Elevation


Dodged House
Ground floor plan
Dodged House
1st floor plan
Dodged House
2nd floor plan
Dodged House
3rd floor plan
Dodged House
Roof plan
Dodged House
Window Detail


Dodged House
Section 
Dodged House
Section 02

Leopold Banchini Architects
Leopold Banchini Architects
Rue de Grenus 121201 Geneva, Switzerland
Bureau
T +351 218 080714
Bureau
Rua Sol a Santana 35 R/C, 1150-342 Lisboa, Portugal