NEVER SEEN . MILAN DESIGN WEEK 2024
Leopold Banchini Architects
Double Negative, 2024
In the desertic plain of Haouz, a backhoe is used to dig a trench. The trench is approximately ten meters long and wide as the digging bucket of the machine. The ground extracted is used to form a small hill right next to it. The digging takes one working day for one man and his machine.
This is a small underground house designed by a simple constructive gesture. The trench, partly covered by a slab, is its living room. The high space excavated under the hill is its bedroom. It stays cold even during the hottest hours of the day. The house is made from the land and stays almost invisible in the landscape. It is hard to predict what will be left of it in a few decades.
Leopold Banchini Architects aims to develop an eclectic and non-dogmatic architecture celebrating simplicity, economy and sustainability. It sees architecture as a tool to support unexpected and diverse ways of living together and refuses to use buildings as representations of power, wealth or cultural superiority. It values the poetry of construction over composition and admires direct answers to unique sites and contexts. It looks for humble aesthetics based on the veracity of expression against preconceived functionalism. It uses creativity to encourage alternative models to commercial methods of production and expands the traditional definitions of project making using DIY cultures as means of emancipation. It challenges established relations of knowledge supremacies and admires the beauty of neo-vernacular buildings and popular intelligence. It sees the origins of architectural elements beyond borders and historical periods. It places political and environmental considerations at the very heart of its practice and addresses architecture as a form of social action.
