An Yen House

The one-story house has an area of 72 square meters and is built on a 115-square-meter plot in My Tho City, Tien Giang Province.

With the idea of creating a peaceful retreat for a retired female homeowner, the design prioritizes natural lighting solutions and a functional layout. To reduce costs, we reused materials from the old house, such as wood and bricks. The construction was completed in two months, with a total cost of approximately 550 million VND, including architecture, basic interior, and fencing.

The house is designed on the background of a garden land, with the desire to create a place to bond for a long time, rest and enjoy life. The house includes 2 bedrooms, kitchen, common living room combined with dining table and altar, along with 2 main and auxiliary entrances to the house, connected to the porch and garden area.

We see each project as a living entity, which carries many variations of emotions and contains interesting things from real experiences, permeating everywhere both inside and outside the project, thereby creating many values that rebuild life energy in a diverse way.

To evoke more emotions in the spaces, the design is created with many natural light approaches, to spread nature evenly on each activity in the house, combined with construction materials reused from the old house such as wood, bricks, help the house share new-old stories in an interesting and intimate way. The highlight of the design is the split-tile roof, which creates space for a skylight. Through a double-layered heat-insulating frosted glass panel, sunlight is diffused and softened, spreading gently throughout the house.

The spaces and buffers were well-calculated to facilitate convenient living. The openings from windows and doors significantly save energy by allowing natural light and air, which helps the indoor plants with photosynthesis and ventilation. The shared living space, which also serves as a dining area, is positioned in front of the two bedrooms. Thanks to the skylight, the space remains well-lit during the day without the need for artificial lighting.

Most of our designs consider not only the current living needs but also adaptability for various future lifestyles. An Yen House is no exception, with emerging needs like the air conditioning system, which was pre-planned during the design phase to avoid affecting other elements in the living space.

More particularly, with the typical tropical monsoon climate conditions, the traditional house has added valuable spaces in the veranda area, forming a neutral zone for people to have a more stable atmosphere inside, the veranda also plays a role in preventing rain splashing, heat, catching wind, helping the house adapt effectively to the climate in any situation and context

An Yen House, a design we calculated to meet most of the essential living needs of a small family, with minimal and optimal scale to improve the quality of life better, while also offering architectural solutions suitable for natural conditions in many regions of Vietnam. Facing the difficulties and limitations of materials, supply, technical conditions and local material characteristics, we always consider applicability as a criterion to create a good design. Along with the weaknesses designed, organized, reasoned, led, arranged in each project, a design that creates many possibilities to cope with the challenges faced by local conditions is a design that has high acceptance. Objectively, architecture is simply designed to meet the challenges of requirements, form, function, materials, design language, ready to meet any limitations of requirements, budget, context, and construction capabilities. This is also the operating philosophy that we pursue, aiming for a good design in each project.

Lead architect: Nguyen Quang Hieu
Design team: Nguyen Quang Hieu, Tran Nam Ha, Vo Thien Phuoc, Nguyen Van Loc, Hoang Duc Minh, Chau Thuy Phuong Anh.
Visual Images: Tran Nam Ha, Nguyen Huu Khuong, Le Hoang Minh Thu
Supervisor: Nguyen Minh Chau