Small Brick House

The small Brick House is a tube house with an area of 4.3m x 12m sharing the same yard with an old house of the owner’s grandparents. The house has three sides close to neighbor’s houses and the main front faces northwest. In front is a yard with a corrugated iron roof, facing a field in a suburb of Gia Lam - Hanoi. The house is designed for a young family of 3 members: a young couple and their son.

The owner desires to design a simple 2-story house with cost-effectiveness, good ventilation, and rusticity and in harmony with a peaceful countryside.

Small and narrow tube houses are very popular in Hanoi capital in particular and in the other Vietnam urban areas in general. This house has the same features with only one small façade, shortage of light and in frequent dampness. The architects from the Tung Nguyen Architects Office have come up with a solution to design more atriums to get maximum light and wind and increase the open space that is always dry for the house. The green trees are arranged alternately in the atriums to regulate the cool air as well as limit the direct sunlight.

The façade is at northwest, which is very sunny in the afternoon. On the 2nd floor, we created 2 layers of inner and outer walls with the balcony is in the middle. The windows arranged in soles of each other combined with green plants to block sunlight comes directly into the bedroom.

The indoor space is designed in minimalist style with all spaces on the first floor are a common space without walls separating the living room, the dinning room and the kitchen. The highlight of the house is that there are 2 atriums in the middle and at the end of the house. The atriums help to bring in light and circulation to keep the indoor space airy and cool. At the same time, family members can communicate with each other without the separation of floors. The 2nd floor is designed with 2 basic bedrooms, an iron stair connects to the roof top through the atrium in the middle of the house.

The architects would like to bring solutions for tube houses: saving electrical energy (lights, fans, air condition...) and limiting the impact to the environment. We use locally available raw materials and do handmade which cost savings to bring a sustainable project. Therefore, bare brick, bare concrete, grinding stone, natural oak combined with iron stairs are the main materials used for the project with the desire to create rusticity and have a connection to nature.

Small Brick House
Project Name: Small Brick House / Tung Nguyen Architects
Office Name: Tung Nguyen Architects
Firm Location: Ha Noi, Viet Nam
Completion Year: 2022
Land Area: 50m2
Gross Built Area: 100m2
Project location: Gia Lam, Ha Noi, Viet Nam
Lead Architects: Nguyen Thanh Tung
Contractor: Vincia Architects
Photo Credits: Hoang Le

Lead Architects: Nguyen Thanh Tung
Design Team: Nguyen Van Hieu, Hua Van Huan

Small Brick House by Tung Nguyen Architects in Vietnam won the WA Award Cycle 45. Please find below the WA Award poster for this project.