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Architects: G+ Architects
- Area: 1280 m²
- Year: 2017
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Photographs:Hiroyuki Oki
Text description provided by the architects. My Tho city was established in the 17th century with a rich history of culture and society, which created a characteristic of a prosperous city that is in harmony with the river civilization of the Western area. The city still retains a lot of ancient features of the colonial architecture of the French period.
Therefore, it also has affected the character of the local people. The coffee shop is combined to a small-scale private antique gallery that is located in a peaceful city near the center and surrounds by the natural landscape of orchards, canals and aquatic systems. Nature, townscape and people are the inspirations of this project.
The design aim based on the viewpoint that an Architecture is an independent element with context, but it is also the factor connecting other components of the context. This point is really important fulcrum which makes a building still alive sustainably even though time has passed.
Therefore, the design team proposed a spatial form that was a combination of basic geometric elements created by the source of on-site materials those were reused from the old local houses removed (such as brick, tile, old door). This solution made the work carry the spirit of construction land. Beside, exaggeration of the cube proportions in relation to human size emphasized the existence of materials.
The whole project consists of 3 houses: the main drinking coffee, a small multi-function and an auxiliary one whose floor plan shapes are basic geometries. They are surrounding the central lake and connecting by the middle way. The main drinking coffee house uses a large tile roof shaped asymmetrical frustum of a rectangular pyramid floating on the lake, it is surrounding by glass walls in order to liberate all views.
The interior space is divided into 3 parts: square, circular and triangular floor areas with lower elevations, which makes user views are the same as the outside water surface level. The roof has punched a hole in the center to get light into the position in front of the counter, the hole is covered by the thin fabric of Mondrian painting to create a print effect on the floor when sunlight passes through. Le Corbusier's principle of horizontal window tape is amplified into three facades for connecting with the natural landscape and erasing the inner-outer boundary.
The method of natural ventilation thanks to the glass horizontal window system combined with the window shutters those are designed low elevation similar to the water surface for getting cool breeze from the lake and regulating the temperature in all space of the coffee house. The floor cote adjustment proposal presented above makes guests sitting to enjoy coffee always feel fresh. Moreover, keeping entire natural trees and canals at the site makes architectural parts be intertwined in an original green landscape, which maintains the clean air in the building core.
