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Architects: a21studio
- Area: 40 m²
- Year: 2013
- Photographs: Hiroyuki Oki
Text description provided by the architects. The house is designed for a middle aged newsman who has been working in years for Vietnam architectural magazines. The site is located at the outskirt of a new city in being urbanism with a variety of housing architecture styles in its surrounding. Therefore, both the architect and client came up with the idea that the new house should be looked green, but not compromise to its comfortable and specially should not much differentiated to next-door neighbours.
Within his constraint budget, a light structure as steel and metal sheets is applied instead of bricks and concrete as usual. Moreover, unused furniture, abandoned but still in good condition, is considered as an appropriate solution for most parts of the house which not only reduces construction cost but also gives the house a distinctive look, the beauty or serenity of old items that comes with age.
Without any doubt, using steel structure not only makes the foundation lighter, but also helps shorten the construction period than normal, and saving cost as well. The house-frame is made by 90x90 steel columns and 30x30 steel beams connecting to metal sheets, then covered or filled in between by plants, so from a distance look, the house is liked a green box. Among these “cool-metal” bars, the nature is defined itself.
Typically, the house is structured into two vertical parts; two private bedrooms on the upper floor, while kitchen and living room on the ground floor and opened to nature without any door or window. This makes the bounder between inside and outside becomes blurry. Besides, by diminishing living space to just sufficiently fitted and leaves the rest intended uncontrolled, the architect attempts to convey the sense that the natural environment outside is larger and closer, as at any views from the house, the trees can be observed with its full beauty. In the other words, the trees are used as the building’s walls, and the house would provide a variety of links between trees and people.
Finally, the idea of the house, above the organization of spaces and flexibility uses of structure, is about a general housing concept for low cost construction, which has been attracted the attention in Vietnam society. By making the most of abandoned items and using enough spaces for living cleverly, people can easily have a comfortable house fulfilled by nature and flexible for any future needs with a limited fund.
Originally published on 4 June, 2013
