Project Name: Cua’s House
Architecture: 3f Concept
Author: Phan Nhat Hung
Location: Hue, Vietnam
Area: 180 m²
Year: 2022
Photo Credits: Nguyen Dang Hieu
Hue is the ancient capital of Vietnam, this city still has an ancient appearance and stores many heritages. The downtown area is really narrow, plus the harsh humid tropical climate, which is extremely hot in summer and rainy in winter. Therefore, most of the residential architecture here is still a tube house with a rather boring, old, and safe architectural form.
Only 10 minutes drive from the city center, the owner has a quite large piece of land, they want to build a different house where they can really relax after a busy working day, not live in “a box”. The Cua’s House land has a total area of nearly 450m2, but we only built the house with a modest area with a total floor area of 180m2 (the ground floor is only 80m2). The rest makes space for landscaping, swimming pools, and planted gardens. The problem here is that the house must be fully connected to the surrounding large landscape space, not be incoherent. Therefore, we designed the master plan in both two directions.
The ground floor is designed with the simplest form possible, it is a horizontal continuation from the fence wall, stretching across the horizontal land, dividing the garden into 2 parts: the front area is the entrance with the parking lot, swimming pool, outdoor party area, behind is a garden with vegetables and fruit trees.
The first floor is arranged perpendicular to the ground floor and stretches along the land to have a view of both the front and back gardens that have been mentioned above. With the console structure reaching out 2.5m, the upper bedroom block becomes a large eave to cover the ground floor area. The eaves are an extremely important element in tropical architecture, it helps to block the hot sun shining as well as the rain in winter directly into the house.
We planted a large tree with shade on the ground floor that penetrates the balcony upstairs to cool the area in the summer. In addition, we also use a solid-hollow contrast technique. The ground floor is designed to be as open as possible, to connect the landscape front and back, and to promote natural elements and ventilation.
The first floor is a solid block with purpose-designed windows. In today’s modern world, the living area of trees is getting smaller and smaller, as an architect – a person who has the ability to direct other people’s living habits, we want to direct people to nature, coexistence, and respect for nature. “If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere”, said Vincent van Gogh.
