BUREAU

Description

The financial crisis that hit Portugal in 2008 produced an incredible density of abandoned spaces and closed buildings, hiding the interiors, as if their life was frozen, waiting for better times to open the windows and return to life again. The Dodged House emerges from this context in the heart of the Mouraria, a multi-cultural neighbourhood in Lisbon. Within a small site, the Dodged House, which has a ground floor of around 40 square metres and is 94 square metres in total, has a strong section and an open void that offers a diversity of interior-exterior spaces extending into a courtyard. Breeze blocks are used as infill to close the building within a visible concrete frame. In a terraced vertical section, the slabs are supported by the concrete structure spanning from wall-to-wall. The floors are sealed with interior glazing, overlooking the full twelve-metre void. The project responds to a complexity of functional requirements that has turned the house into a «machine for living», playing with the history of modernism and its inhabitable typologies. The project pays a double tribute. On one hand it is a tribute to Irving Gill’s architecture, whose practice echoes the Portuguese context. On the other hand it is a tribute to a moment in the time during which the project was developed. With an opaque façade, it has wagered on less marketable features, like space, void, interior volume, eschewing efficiency of land use.
Dodged House is a project by BUREAU (Daniel Zamarbide) with Leopold Banchini Architects