Hasta La Ideas

Weddings and parties take place inside halls framed by stone, timber and bamboo at this events building for a Vietnam hotel by Vietnamese firm Vo Trong Nghia Architects (+ slideshow).

The Kontum Indochine Wedding Restaurant is the second building Vo Trong Nghia Architects has completed at the Kontum Indochine Hotel, following a bamboo cafe that is situated next door.

There are three banquet halls contained inside the building – one on the ground floor that seats 800 guests and two on the first floor that each accommodate up to 400 people.

The largest space is known as the Stone Hall, as it surrounded by ridged walls made up of basalt stone slabs. Some of the slabs have been polished, while others have been either hammered or left raw.

“These stone slabs have different surfaces, creating both dignified and delicate spatial characteristics, which are well suited to festive ceremonies,” said the architects.

The other two halls are double-height spaces with vaulted ceilings, including one made from self-supporting bamboo frames and one comprising nine fan-shaped timber fins.

A large foyer connects the three halls and leads up to offices on the second floor.

A louvred facade made from locally quarried pink granite surrounds three of the building’s elevations, helping to shade the interiors from direct sunlight.

“The louvres blur the outline and details of the building, creating an abstract volume, well balanced with the surrounding landscape,” added the studio.

Vo Trong Nghia Architects completed the Kontum Indochine Cafe earlier this year. Other projects by the firm include a bamboo-framed conference centre and a school with open-air corridors.

See more architecture by Vo Trong Nghia »
See more architecture in Vietnam »

Photography is by Hiroyuki Oki.

Here’s a project description from Vo Trong Nghia Architects:

Kontum Indochine Wedding Restaurant

Kontum Indochine Wedding Restaurant is designed as a part of a hotel complex along the Dakbla River in Kontum City, Central Vietnam. Adjacent to Dakbla Bridge, a gateway to Kontum City, the restaurant serves as a venue for wedding ceremonies, conferences and social activities of the hotel guests and citizens. The 5500-square-metre building, which contains three banquet halls and office space over three storeys, is covered by louvres made of local pink granite stone, quarried in Binh Dinh Province, 150km away from the site. The louvres blur the outline and details of the building, creating an abstract volume, well balanced with the surrounding landscape. Two different finishes were applied to each louvre; its front surface was polished, creating a sparkling exterior when exposed to sunlight, while the two edges and back surface were framed to soften the light coming into the building. Visitors can enjoy the view of the river through the louvres in light pink, being protected from harsh tropical sunlight.

The three banquet halls feature three different natural materials; stone, bamboo, and wood. Walls and columns of the “Stone Hall”, located on the ground floor and capable of 800 guests, are composed of Basalt stone slabs 120 deep, 80mm high and 595mm long. These stone slabs have different surfaces; pitch-faced, polished or hammered, creating both dignified and delicate spatial characteristics, which are well suited to festive ceremonies. 

Both the “Bamboo Hall” and “Wooden Hall” are located on the second level, each having capacity for 400 guests. The materials vary between the two halls, giving different characteristics of each space.

The “Bamboo Hall” is a ceremonial space composed of self-standing bamboo frames 6.5m high and spanning 18m. These bamboo frames are illuminated by the light fittings, hence the hall gives a quiet and intimate impression compared to the bamboo structure in the adjacent facility; “Indochine Café” which is a commodious open space.

The “Wooden Hall” has a ceiling consisting of nine fan-shaped louvres. The louvres are made of 20mm x 50mm brightly coloured pieces of endemic timber locally called “Kate”. The ceiling gently illuminates the interior functions similar to a light shade.

Natural light and air pass through the pink stone louvres into the foyer, which lies in front of the two halls and is accessible from the staircase on both ends of the building.

Architect Firm: Vo Trong Nghia Architects
Principal architects: Vo Trong Nghia, Takashi Niwa (2 principals)
Status: Built in 07. 2013
Program: Banquet hall
Location: Kontum, Vietnam
GFA: 5,524m2
Photographs: Hiroyuki Oki
Client: Truong Long JSC
Contractor: Truong Long JSC + Wind and Water House JSC

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by Vo Trong Nghia Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

A knot-shaped rooftop will be used as a vegetable garden at this kindergarten by Vo Trong Nghia Architects that’s under construction in Dong Nai, Vietnam (+ slideshow).

Set to complete later this year, the Farming Kindergarten is designed by Vietnamese firm Vo Trong Nghia Architects as a prototype for sustainable school design, where children can learn how to grow their own food.

The roof has a continuous surface that loops around to frame the outline of three courtyard playgrounds. It slopes up from the ground and peaks at two storeys, allowing an easy climb to the vegetable garden for children and their teachers.

“While these internal courtyards provide safety and comfortable playgrounds for children, the roof makes a landing to the courtyards at both sides, allowing children to enter a very special eco-friendly experience when they walk up and go through it,” say the architects.

Classrooms inside the building will follow the same loop as the roof and will accommodate up to 500 children. Concrete louvres will shade the windows, offering relief from intense sunlight.

Vo Trong Nghia Architects won the schools category at the World Architecture Festival awards last year for its naturally ventilated Binh Duong School. In an interview with Dezeen, Vo Trong Nghia explained how he believes “green buildings” that use less energy are the future of architecture in Vietnam. See more architecture by Vo Trong Nghia or see more stories about design in Vietnam.

Other kindergartens completed recently include a doughnut-shaped pre-school in China and a nursery in France with rippling concrete walls. See more kindergartens on Dezeen.

Construction photography is by Hiroyuki Oki.

Here’s a project description from Vo Trong Nghia Architects:

Farming Kindergarten

This kindergarten, for 500 pre-school children, is a prototype for sustainable education spaces in tropical climates. The plan was designed for the factory workers children of Pou Chen Vietnam.

The building concept is a “Farming Kindergarten” with a continuous green roof, providing food and agriculture experience to Vietnamese children, as well as a safe outdoor playground.

The green roof is a triple-ring-shape drawn with a single stroke, creating three courtyards inside. While these internal courtyards provide safety and comfortable playgrounds for children, the roof makes landing to the courtyards at both sides, allowing children to enter a very special eco-friendly experience when they walk up and go through it. This green roof is designed as a continuous vegetable garden, a place to teach children the importance of agriculture and relationship with nature.

Architectural and mechanical energy-saving methods are comprehensively applied including but not limited to: green roof, PC-concrete louver for shading, recycle materials, water recycling, solar water heating and so on. These devices are designed visibly for children to play their important role in sustainable education. The building is designed to maximise the natural ventilation through a computational fluid dynamics analysis.

The building is now under construction and expected to start its operation in September 2013.

Status: Under construction
Program: Kindergarten
Location: Dongnai, Vietnam
Site area: 10,650 m2
GFA: 3,800m2

Architect Firm: Vo Trong Nghia Architects
Principal architects: Vo Trong Nghia, Takashi Niwa, Masaaki Iwamoto
Architects: Tran Thi Hang, Kuniko Onishi
Contractor: Wind and Water House JSC
Client: Pou Chen Vietnam

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Vo Trong Nghia Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

This spiralling stone house in Vietnam by architect Vo Trong Nghia has grass on its roof and an oval courtyard at its centre (+ slideshow).

Vo Trong Nghia wanted to avoid copying the concrete and plaster buildings that are common in the surrounding Quang Ninh province and to instead create “a space that can record the changes and traces of time over the years through the aging of natural materials”.

Following this concept, the two-storey Stone House is constructed from locally quarried stone blocks that are stacked up in an alternating grid to give a brickwork pattern to the walls.

Dark timber frames surround the windows and stand out against the muted grey colour of the stone.

Like many of Vo Trong Nghia’s projects, the house was designed to minimise energy consumption. The central courtyard contains both a tree and a pool of water, intended to naturally cool the surrounding rooms.

Similarly, a thick layer of grass blankets the entire roof and is maintained by an inbuilt irrigation system.

The spiralling volume of the house gives a variety of ceiling heights to rooms on both floors. Bedrooms are stacked up on top of one another with lower ceilings, while the living room becomes a double height space.

Small study areas branch off from the main corridor and slot into the spaces between rooms.

Dark wood beams create stripes across the ceilings and accommodate low-energy LED lighting. Timber also lines the walls in most rooms and was used to construct the staircase.

Vietnamese architect Vo Trong Nghia has studios in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, and his firm picked up two awards at the 2012 World Architecture Festival for the Stacking Green house and Binh Duong School. Speaking to Dezeen, Nghia explained his plans to reduce the energy crisis in both residential and public buildings.

See more architecture by Vo Trong Nghia Architects »
See more architecture in Vietnam »

Photography is by Hiroyuki Oki.

Here’s some more information from Vo Trong Nghia Architects:

Stone House

This torus-shaped stone house is located in a quiet residential quarter beside the way to Ha Long Bay from Hanoi. A rising green roof and walls composed of subdued color stones in dark blue create a landscape, which stands out in the new residential area.

In Vietnam, ordinary houses are made by reinforced concrete, brick, plaster and painted boards despite there are abundant natural resources in the country such as stone, timber and so on. The subject of this project was to create a space that can record the changes and traces of time over the years through the aging of natural materials, which contributes to cultivate the beauty and enhance inhabitants’ affection for the house. To achieve this goal, stones quarried from Thanh Hoa province (so-called blue stone) and hard wood (“Go Huong”) were chosen for the main material of the house and they are designed together with greenery.

Above: concept diagram

A characteristic of this house is the layout of rooms in an elliptic plan. The rooms, composed of four clusters, surround the oval courtyard, making a colony-like relationship. The voids are inserted between each room-clusters and become activity nodes for its inhabitants as well as pathways for wind and light, connecting the courtyard and outside garden. The surface of the oval courtyard is a shallow pond with a symbol tree, which let cool air flow into the interior spaces.

Above: ground floor plan

Circulating flow runs around the courtyard and continues to the green roof, connecting all places in the house. The rising roof creates spaces with various ceiling height, which correspond to the functions of the house. For instance, the living room has nearly five-meter-high slanted ceiling, which provides verticality and openness. The courtyard and the green roof compose a sequential garden, which creates a rich relationship between inside and outside of the house. Residents discover the changes of the seasons and realize their wealthy life with the nature, thanks to this sequential garden. Irrigation pipes are buried under the soil of green roof as a component of automatic watering system, to lighten the maintenance work of the inhabitants.

Above: first floor plan

To create a wall with smooth curvature, cubic stones with 10cm thickness, 10cm height and 20 cm width are carefully stacked. The curved wall was stacked trapezoidal stone alternately and the regular pattern of the gap performs the play of light and shadow. Massive and meticulous texture of the wall generates a cave-like space, which recalls the image of a primitive house.

Above: roof plan

Interior of the living and dining room is finished with hard wood. Wood boards on its wall and round-shaped wood louvers under the ceiling create a friendly atmosphere for gathering. Louvers have LED tapes on its tops of and provide indirect light to the space underneath.

The fence of the house was also made of blue stones. It is harmonized with the main building and its garden. Creepers on the barb wires on the fence form a circle of green, and this green fence together with the green roof create a multi-layered green-scape and become a landmark of the town.

Above: section

Cow grass was originally planted on the roof and several native ferns covered the roof afterwards. The combination of plants, stones and timbers provides a space, in which the time of the family is being recorded. The family with 2 young children has been enjoying their living in the house which changing day by day. They sense each other and deepen their communication, rounding and rounding in the house.

Above: section

Architect Firm: Vo Trong Nghia Architects
Principal architect: Vo Trong Nghia
Contractor: Wind and Water House JSC
Status: Built in 02.2012
Program: Private House
Location: Quang Ninh province, Vietnam
GFA: 360sqm
Client: Individual

The post Stone House by
Vo Trong Nghia appeared first on Dezeen.

Vietnamese studio Vo Trong Nghia Architects plans to address the housing crisis in Vietnam by introducing modular homes that use cheap local materials and are easy to assemble.

Housing areas in the country have been expanding at a rapid pace over the last ten years but according to the architects many families still live in houses that have less than ten square metres in floor area.

“The project started as voluntary work, responding to the serious housing issue for low income classes in Vietnam,” Vo Trong Nghia Architects‘ Masaaki Iwamoto told Dezeen. “We inspected Mekong Delta Area, where the housing problems for the poor are very serious.”

The architects came up with a concept for a house with a lightweight steel structure, before building full-size prototypes of a house and office with layered walls of corrugated polycarbonate and bamboo.

“If we make the house with concrete and bricks, which is the most typical structure in south-east Asia, it can be very dangerous even though the house itself is strong, just because of the soft and weak condition of the ground,” said Iwamoto. “So we decided to design a lightweight structure within a squeezed budget.”

On the assumption that bathroom and kitchen facilities will be located outside, the buildings are designed as single rooms where living, sleeping and dining areas are divisible through changes in the floor level or by drawing curtains.

Beds fold down from the side walls and can also be used as seating areas and each residence can be extended to allow extra room for growing families.

To reduce construction costs, residents are invited to contribute to the construction process, plus to reduce living costs each house will be equipped with natural ventilation systems and rainwater harvesting facilities.

Now they’ve built the prototypes, the architects plan to develop the design to make it even more affordable. “Another possibility is to utilise cheap local materials such as coconuts leaves for walls or roof,” said Iwamoto, “and we will try to improve and enhance the indoor environment more, without using a power supply.”

“Some of our friends have already shown their interest to apply this prototype as a voluntary investment,” he added. “We are trying to find out the way to realize it.”

This isn’t the first sustainable architecture project by Vo Trong Nghia Architects. Other projects we’ve featured include a house with a vertical garden and a school with sheltered open-air corridors.

We’ve also interviewed principal architect Vo Trong Nghia about his plans to reduce the energy crisis in both residential and public buildings. See all our stories about Vo Trong Nghia Architects.

Photography is by Hiroyuki Oki.

Here’s a project description from Vo Trong Nghia:

According to the statistics, the quantity of total housing area in Vietnam has been increased tenfold in the last decade. However, many families are still living in very small houses, some of which are less than 10 square meters. It is an important issue for Vietnam to provide houses for low-income classes.

The aim of this project is to propose a prototype house for low-income classes in the Mekong Delta area. By minimizing the functions of the house and using low cost materials throughout, the construction cost of a house can be brought down to as little as about 3200USD. Living expenses will also be reduced by using natural resources and energies.

Above: site plan – click above for larger image

Two prototypes were experimentally constructed in Dong Nai province, on the construction site of a Kindergarten project designed by Vo Trong Nghia Architects. The first house, with a floor area of 22.5 square meters, was designed as a model home, the second, measuring 18 square meters, was designed as a site office for the Kindergarten, showing the flexibility of this prototype.

Above: house floor plan – click above for larger image

On the assumption that the bathroom and kitchen are placed outside and shared with several families, the house has minimum space for living, eating and sleeping. The plan was designed to be adjustable toward the longitudinal direction, allowing for future expansion of family members and functions. Its interior is a simple one-room space, articulated by curtains and differences in level of the floor. The floor rises higher in part, creating minimum furniture such as a desk.

Above: house front elevation – click above for larger image

The other distinctive feature is the installation of folding beds, which allow the dwellers to sit on the floor during the day. These beds can also be transformed into sofas if required.

Above: house rear elevation – click above for larger image

In order to reduce the construction cost, dwellers are encouraged to participate in the construction process. The structure of the prototype house is, therefore, a lightweight steel frame, which is easy to assemble without the use of machines, nor special techniques. Considering the recyclability of materials, wet joints are avoided as possible. The roof is supported by truss-beams composed of steel bars, which minimize steel material and give ideal pitch for waterproofing.

Above: office floor plan – click above for larger image

The envelope of the house is composed of a polycarbonate panel wall and corrugated FRP panel roof, and bamboo louvers are set inside of it. Both materials are available everywhere in Vietnam and are cheap, light and replaceable. Bamboo is rapid-growing and therefore the eco-friendly material.

Above: office front elevation – click above for larger image

Translucent envelope and bamboo louvers filter harsh direct sunshine in the tropical climate. The interior is filled with diffused light and reduces the need for artificial lighting, dramatically reducing electricity consumption. There is also a gap between the roof and the wall, which has the function of evacuating the hot air. As the whole space is naturally ventilated there is no need for an air conditioner to be installed in this house. A pent roof was designed to collect rain water for daily use in the dry season. Utilizing blessings of nature, dwellers can save great amount of energies, resources and therefore money.

Above: office rear elevation – click above for larger image

Project Name: Low Cost House
Location: Dong Nai Province, Vietnam
Competion: 08/2012
Architect Firm: Vo Trong Nghia Architects
Principal architect’s Name: Vo Trong Nghia, Masaaki Iwamoto
Architect’s Name: Kosuke Nishijima
Contractor: Wind and Water House JSC
Client: Wind and Water House JSC
Floor area Floor.1: 22.5m2, Floor.2: 18m2

The post Low Cost House by
Vo Trong Nghia Architects appeared first on Dezeen.

World Architecture Festival: in this movie we filmed, architect Vo Trong Nghia explains how the house he designed with a vertical garden on its facade incorporates natural daylighting and ventilation systems that are invaluable in Vietnam, which experiences heavy rain and high temperatures, but often suffers day-long power shortages.

Named Stacking Green, the building won the award in the house category at the World Architecture Festival in Singapore earlier this month and is located in Ho Chi Minh City.

“In Vietnam we have many problems with energy and electricity, it can stop many times a day,” Nghia tells Dezeen editor-in-chief Marcus Fairs. During these times light is able to filter into the house through the inner wall of glazing, but the twelve layers of plants in front prevent direct sunlight from passing through and increasing the internal temperature.

Natural ventilation also comes through this planted facade. ”To invite wind into the house you open a window and then the air goes through the vertical garden,” he says. “Even when it is raining you can open the windows.”

Nghia also discusses how Vietnam is “developing so quick,” but shouldn’t fall into the easy trap of following the architectural styles of western countries. “The climate is totally different, yet we almost do the same thing,” he says, before explaining why he designed this house for the continuous “hot summer” rather than for the changing seasons of Europe.

Read more about Stacking Green in our earlier story, or see more stories about Vo Trong Nghia.

We’ve filmed a series of interviews with award winners at the World Architecture Festival. See all the movies we’ve published so far, including our interview with architect Chris Wilkinson about the World Building of the Year.

See all our stories about WAF 2012 »

The post “In Vietnam we have problems with energy”
– Vo Trong Nghia on Stacking Green appeared first on Dezeen.