10.8231°N, 106.6297°E. Ho Chi Minh City. Here, the tropical sunlight is so intense that we primarily recognize it as a physical hindrance, like the rain or the wind, before we consider it as an abstract existence in architecture. You can easily imagine its harshness when you see most of the people outside wearing, even in the hottest season, coats and multiple layers of clothes to protect themselves from the sun’s strong rays. If you look around the city’s streets, you can also note they are full of add-ons purposefully arranged to create shades: observe the outdoor parking areas, the street-cafes, the flower shops or the play-yards in schools… Indeed, under such a heavy sunlight, it is as natural to seek and generate shadows as to have umbrellas and raincoats under rainy conditions.
In the heart of Saigon (also known as Ho Chi Minh City), stands the touristic landmark of Ben Thanh Market and, right next to it, the renovation project of a French colonial style building. Built at the beginning of the 20th century, the edifice is a substantial piece of the city’s heritage and participates in creating the distinctive ambience of Saigon.
The Proscenium is a small dessert restaurant located in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City. The project is the renovation of the ground floor of a former residential building that was built as part of a large block redevelopment completed in the 1990’s. Dozens of row houses forming the block were build with similar decorative elements such as Greekish columns and moldings, reflecting the developer’s intention for instant architectural potency. This kind of ephemeral dream is regarded as chimerical or is simply neglected nowadays, and indeed most of those original decorative elements have vanished through the recent years of overdevelopment in the central commercial district, during which time the next trend has already been discovered. This illustrates how an architectural style is written and rewritten during the frantic economic growth that major Vietnamese cities are currently undergoing. Our project began with a reflection on this rapid trend cycle and ended by reclaiming the abandoned design with a new design element slid into the building.
Avoiding social interaction yet allowed wide possibilities of contact with nature is the core aim of this project.
The owners wanted to keep the house as the private meeting hub for the big family, rather than for hospitality purpose. There was no hunger of connection with the neighborhood.
“Nhà phố” – a kind of architectural feature of Ho Chi Minh city has been built rapidly in bulk in the correspondence with the city’s development and the society’s need.
In addition to the intended use, some of the townhouses are being used as a business base; they come out in a rush and are operated almost the same based on the constructors and investors’ using habit and living environment. It has led to the result that there is little change in the building’s plan: the atrium and stair are arranged in the middle of the house, dividing the house into two separate parts. This arrangement since then has created many problems in terms of ventilation and lighting as well as the privacy of the surrounding living spaces but there is still no reasonable solution.
Dali office is for the board of directors of Dali building. Both the owner and staffs are all women who like romance, colors and express a desire for an exciting but cosy working place, they also want the furniture of the old office could be utilized for the new one. With the position on the terrace of the 13 floor building, using natural ventilation was requested. In addition, the colorful appearance is going to be a highlight for outdoor activities and events at night.
The serial project, called “S HOUSE”, has begun to propose a prototype house for low-income classes in the Mekong Delta area. After building two successful case-study houses, a steel structure model in 2012 and a precast concrete structure model in April 2014, a new prototype, S HOUSE 3, was constructed in Ho Chi Minh City.
Today, the target for hunger reduction is on a global scale. In Asia Pacific, 12% of the population is in bad health because of a lack of food, and just in Vietnam from 2014 to 2016, this number is 11%, which means that 10.3 million people are underfed.
Global climate change has been influencing the agricultural productivity in many areas. Especially in Vietnam today, sea level rise, droughts and salt marsh usually occur in Southern provinces. The aforementioned problems have greatly affected the national food security, which requires us to have appropriate and practical solutions.
University of Architecture, Ho Chi Minh City (UAH) was founded in 1951 in the center of Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) formerly known as Saigon at address 196 Pasteur street, district 03, HCMC. Sixty-five years ago, the university was a school which had a closed relationship with French École des Beaux-Arts. Until now, UAH has been developing rapidly from a small architecture school to become a university with many departments and subjects including architecture, urban planning, interior design, industrial design, structural engineering and infrastructural technology. At the moment, the university has welcomed more 8,000 students of all years and courses. A huge number of students is really a challenge for the capacity of the existing university campus. This problem leaded to a vital need of the new additional construction of UAH in Thu Duc district, HCMC. The campus building was opened officially in 2015.
This is the individual house project at a small alley in the center of Ho Chi Minh City.
When having a look at Vietnamese towns, we can realize that the buildings’ blocks separated by main streets, and numerous narrow alleys inside of the blocks like blood capillary. The width of these alleys is quite narrow around 2m – 4m, occasionally less than 1m. When walking around these alleys, we can see very vivacious Vietnamese life., these narrow alleys are called “HEM” and these are quite attractive urban spaces in Vietnam.
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