The site locates on the riverbank in Cam Thanh commune, where had been flooded the previous year. It is surrounded by a typical agricultural landscape in Hoi An Ancient town of Quang Nam. The owner of the house is an environmental expert, she thinks about the house as a space mixed with local greenery landscape. It is also necessary to be a space with enough tranquility for the education’s target that she directed towards her son who needs a certain condition to grown-up.
This house is not only a home for four persons to live in, it is also a place where the birds, the spiders, or insects find shelter in the foliage. Furthermore, it is a mini-community center where the host works with her environmental activist group and meets with neighbors to build community bonds as she wished.
The house in my vision is a traditional shophouse in Hoi An ancient town but rolled up like a snail-shell. It is also built with these local materials at a very affordable cost.
‘Structure’ of the house is a word that has two meanings.
First, it is the combination and motor mechanisms of the different parts that make up the whole, such as its snail-shell organization that is resistant to flooding during the tropical rainy season. Second, it is the combination of the relationships between elements inside the house and factors outside the house (eg its social structure with the agricultural landscape). So internally, human activities are encouraged to occur under different scenarios, which create different boundaries of space. Thanks to that, the shape of the space changes, it promotes the activities of people and neighbors to create a mixture of space that blends together and create a complete house. It is how ‘Structure’ becomes ‘Architecture’.
