a21house, in Vietnam

Here is the owner – designer thoughts: “Every morning, the first thing that I would like to have is drawing first lines in a comfortable and joyful mind. I used to dream of an office-house for not travelling in a frequent traffic-jam and highly polluted place like Hochiminh City.

Within a limited budget, an unusual small non-square shape plot, just took ten minutes to the city central, seems to be the best choice to make the dream come true. The forty square meters polygon plot faced to a public ground, with only one and a half meter width in front, located at the end of a lane, surrounded by other neighbour houses’ tall-walls, are big challenges to design an airy office-house for four employees including a couple with a child.

Standing in this small and cramped space at the first time, instead of reluctantly thinking of green, environmentally sustainable or eco- architecture …, a wild-cage, capturing nature, in which sunlight, wind, rain-water, and trees define human activities, becomes the inspiration of a21 house.

In the concept, we consider the site is filled with nature. Then, when people come, they are given enough spaces to operate their activities and leave the rest freely developed as in nature. We believe that this can be applied to different situations. By doing this, we would like to remind us the old good days, when nature was all around us and man feel the changing of nature and enjoyed their lives.

Back to the a21house, an existing tree is acknowledged as the core of the house and the furniture, which is related to people activities, are arranged around that core. Therefore, people lives are occurred in an open and well ventilated space, while they still can find a comfortable place for their own activities.

Lighting, intentionally directed to thread through the interstices of the floor’s wooden sticks that are installed side-by-side or in different slot depended on functional space, is led from the roof to the ground floor to illuminate the narrowest corners of the house. An open-air space with an averrhoa carambola, located at the acute angle of the house and closely connected to office area, is not only purposely “squared” the office and bed-room area, but also created an opportunity for sun-light, even water-rain and wind to naturally blow in.

Nowadays, every morning, sitting beside the tree with a cup of coffee reflecting glisten leafs in the early morning sun-light, harmonized with soft and gentle melody, I think of the next drawings for on-progress projects.”