AD ARCHITECTURAL DIGEST
THE INTERNATIONAL DESIGN AUTHORITY DEC 2020
THE 58 HOUSE Located in Nại Hiên Đông, Vietnam
Designed by 85 Design Images Courtesy of Unsplash
The 58 House
Story by Archdaily, Images Courtesy of Unsplash
There has been a wide range of house designing and building rules that exist many years ago in Vietnam and other East Asian countries, particularly during the Feng Shui rule. This sometimes lead to architects struggling with coming up with creative design ideas. For instance, building the house of the wealthy, the front door, and the master bedroom must be suitable for the owner’s ages. Moreover, the living room should always be facing the main facade, which is the first place you have to go through when you want to enter the house. 1 / Architectural Digest
2 / Architectural Digest
Interior Design Story by Archdaily, Images Courtesy of Unsplash
As we work for this project with investors, we have consented to just keep a little of the Asian Feng Shui principle in the design process. We mainly focus on our design principles or what we call science Feng Shui — a combination among natural science foundation, biometrics, psychology, and environment. The most important part of the house is the kitchen which is at the back along with a small garden. The kitchen features a wood panel cabinets, a built-in refrigerator, and an open layout for cooking and entertainment. All activities in these spaces are connected to the garden by the mobility of sliding doors, creating the feeling as if these spaces are a unified and private one. Besides the kitchen, we also set a bedroom on the 1st floor. This bedroom is for grandparents because they are elders, their priority is convenience in every daily activity. Their bedroom is also connected directly with the small garden which is their world. We assure not only the open and coolness but also safety. 3 / Architectural Digest
The layout of the bridge corridors really promote efficiency in the use, the connection of private and common space is very simple and extremely effective. The third room can also be changed to a study room. There is also a green space and playground for families on beautiful sunny days or for parents to have romantic evenings. When the children grow up, that redundant bedroom will become a private one for them. All the rooms are directly full of light and wind. We did the same with the toilet for it to receive the best natural features as we know that those factors are important to the overall experience. The materiality imprinted in the house leads the general environment to the unique worldliness, enabling dialogue between the elements and discontinuing the spaces with delicacy. Additionally, we placed a beautiful mahogany wooden staircase in the center of the house. There is a big window placed at the quarterturn to view the backyard. Our mission by designing the L-shaped stairs was to have walking to the upper floor a special experience dedicated to reflecting on one’s surroundings. On the 2nd floor, there is a bedroom for the couple, a sharing bedroom for their children and a remaining bedroom used temporarily as a playing area, reading and relaxing for the family. The bedrooms are connected by bridge corridors, so parents can easily control the activities and studying of two children.
“We studied extremely thoroughly about environmental elements that affect these areas, thus we installed adjustable sun louvers to decrease the impact of the undesirable summer heat and actively receive light and wind.�
4 / Architectural Digest
Exterior Design Story by Archdaily, Images Courtesy of Unsplash
The main design concept is to create a house which has close relationship with nature and this is achieved by having a swimmingpool linking the house with the landscape and ultimately visual connections with the sea. The idea of connection is reinforced by having the basement level media-room with a window which allows diffuse natural light in and also views out into the pool.
The curved roofs, which symbolizing the sea waves, also emphasize the idea of the nearby sea. These are almost totally covered with thin bendable photovoltaic panels supplying enough energy to the house, while the remaining area is used as a green roof which gives residents some outdoor leisure and entertainment spaces. Because of the prominent raised nature of the site and the prominent placing of the building overlooking the road we decided to make the building appear light and to ‘float’ with large cantilevers of thin elements to reduce the apparent mass of the building seen from the road. The site sits on the busy Cluny Road facing the entrance to the botanic gardens. From the road, the site sloped up steeply to a platform level many metres above road level. Like mentioned before, there is a outdoor garden after walking out from the kitchen. To make the most of the surrounding greenery, landscaped ponds and courtyards were created as focal loci, both to extend visual links to this borrowed landscape, and to separate the various wings of the house for a more overall private and comfortable feeling.
5 / Architectural Digest
Taking the Asian cues of extended family courtyard living further the structure is topped off with a sleek large roof with exaggerated overhangs, which serves as necessary protection against the more extreme weather patterns we are experiencing. To keep the house cool in summer, apart from the sun louver system, there is also anti-heat roof measures. Large roof overhangs are introduced to shade the bedroom windows from the tropical sun. Roof gardens are effective in helping to cool the building as well help retaining water at time of heavy rain. The intention was to try to allow each roof garden provided a base for the story above allowing the layered effect to make each story feel like it was a single storey dwelling sitting in a garden. To keep the house safe, we designed the security and alarm system to include motion sensor cameras and detectors. To conclude, we architects hope we could inspire other colleagues to develop more projects like this to reality and to change the awareness of future generations toward mother earth.
“The 58 House is a modest and yet luxurious residential design which gives residents opportunities to live in harmony and comfortably with nature.�
6 / Architectural Digest
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