Design Vanguard 2025: Leopold Banchini
Geneva
Architects & Firms
“Architecture is a great tool for discovering the world,” says Geneva-born Leopold Banchini. In his adult life to date, the 43-year-old has lived, studied, and worked in places as diverse as Australia, Bahrain, Morocco, Portugal, Scotland, the U.S., and his native Switzerland. But, unlike the nomads of yore, who hauled their baggage with them, Banchini travels to unlearn his European certainties and find out how they do it elsewhere.
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Marramarra Shack (1 & 2)
Banchini used timber pillars made of repurposed 200-year-old electrical posts left by British colonialists and local spotted gum timber for ceiling and floor beams in this small residence on Aboriginal land in New South Wales, Australia. A large north-facing window, which can be hoisted upward using counterweights, dominates the interior and pulls in views of the nearby creek. Photos © Rory Gardiner, click to enlarge.
Take one of his most recent projects, Dar El Farina (2024), a house he built in Morocco’s rural Al Haouz region. “My wife had six months’ maternity leave, so we decided to rent a farm out there. I couldn’t resist having a go myself to test out the local building culture.” Foundations made from local river rocks, rammed-earth walls, sparing amounts of concrete (“an expensive resource in rural Morocco”), and agricultural sheet steel combine to form a building of austere beauty, which lines up rooms and patios in a strict and frugal enfilade. As Banchini explains of this close collaboration with local contractors, “Most of the world’s structures go up without architects—there are tremendous skills, knowledge, and ideas about how to build inexpensively.”
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Dar El Farina (3 - 5 and top of page)
The unforgiving desert setting informed key design strategies for this private house, designed with Sana Nabaha, in Al Haouz, Morocco, dictating its rammedearth walls and minimal windows. Large rotating doors can open or close individual spaces along an impressive enfilade of rooms and patios. Photos © Rory Gardiner
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Running through everything he does, this hands-on interest in materials, economy, and construction can be seen in his many temporary structures, such as the 2021 Moon Ra pavilion in Vilvoorde, Belgium. Designed for the Horst Arts and Music Festival, it recycles materials from a previous pavilion, “right down to the bolts and screws.” Constructed by students attending a workshop, this vernacular shelter in dimensional lumber and plywood references historic barns and roundhouses. For Horst 2025, Banchini is going more high-tech, working with the American DJ DVS1 to make a sort of sonic pergola—a canopy of speakers offering in-the-round sound.
Moon Ra
Erected by students using materials from a disassembled pavilion that had occupied the site, this structure covers a dance floor and fire pit where people attending the Horst Festival in Vilvoorde, Belgium, can cavort. A rotating disc at the top opens to the moon and sends out smoke signals to the rest of the gathering. Photo © Maxime Delvaux
In complete contrast, the Villa M (2024), on the shores of Lake Geneva, couldn’t appear more permanent. “Regulations required a huge concrete basement, so I thought, ‘Why not go all the way?’” he says of this raw, rough-cast box. Rising to the challenge of an impossible site—local code, as well as limiting height, restricted building width to just 12½ feet—Banchini lined up below-grade bedrooms along an open-air sheet of water, to give them more light, and connected the ground-level living area to a swimming pool, which reflects the skyline of the distant Alps. Deliberately mute, the villa, which he likens to a boulder, bows to the splendor of its setting.
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Villa M (6 - 8)
Responding to the majestic scenery of Lake Geneva and the nearby Alps, Banchini kept the form and facades of this private residence in Mies, Switzerland, as simple as possible. The ground-floor living spaces open on a large pool with a small floating terrace, while bedrooms sit one level belowground and overlook an enclosed patio. Photos © Rory Gardiner
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Dodged House
Located in the historic city center of Lisbon, this 1,000-square-foot project, a collaboration with Daniel Zamarbide, fits snugly within a row of traditional attached houses on a narrow street. A cement-block exterior complements the locally sourced tiles and stones used for the furniture and interior surfaces. Photo © Dylan Perrenoud
Given his penchant for treading lightly, it’s no surprise to learn that Banchini runs a one-person office. For bigger projects, he collaborates with other practices, as is the case for the social-housing projects he’s currently designing in Switzerland. “By definition, costs are low and quality tends to suffer because developers see these homes as a mere financial product. There are a lot of rules but also, because no one really cares, a lot of freedom,” he says of his attempt to build a better caliber of housing in timber. This blend of ethics and a lightness of touch has characterized his approach since his student days, when he defended a thesis about New York’s prisons by setting forth all the reasons not to build them. Ever since, his has been an alternative way to practice.
Leopold Banchini. Photo courtesy Leopold Banchini Architects
FOUNDED: 2016
DESIGN STAFF: 1
PRINCIPAL: Leopold Banchini
EDUCATION:
University of Lausanne, M.Arch., 2007; École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, M.Arch., 2006; Glasgow School of Art, 2004
WORK HISTORY:
BUREAU A, 2007–15; b720 Fermín Vázquez Arquitectos, 2007
KEY COMPLETED PROJECTS:
Al Naseej Textile Factory, 2021, Bani Jamrah; House for Architectural Heritage, 2017, Muharrag (both in Bahrain); Dar El Farina, 2024, Al Haouz, Morocco; Marramarra Shack, 2020, Berowra, Australia; Casa do Monte, 2019, Lisbon
KEY CURRENT PROJECTS:
Motel 69 Subsidized Housing, Geneva; Chalet Erratic, Champery (both in Switzerland); Flux Athens; Round About Bath, Logrono, Spain; Dark Skies, Vilvoorde, Belgium
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