WORKLOUNGE 03- VIETNAM
Architectural & Sustainable Design Office

Landing House
Hiroomi Takemori + WORKLONGE 03- VIETNAM

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A house built on a site like an long-narrow shape with walls on both long sides that are in close contact with the neighboring land, and with an opening facing the outside only on the short side, is called “tube house”, and is a typicalhouse in Vietnam. Some are developed from rowhouses in urban centers, while others are similar in shape to strips of land facing narrow alleys in rural areas, and this site is the latter category. The site has been a farming village 1,300 years ago and was on the outskirts of Hanoi, but today it is a high-density residential area in the center of Hanoi. The front road is less than 2 meters wide, barely enough for motorbikes and people to pass. Four- or five-story buildings extend cantilevers above the alley, further filling the narrow sky above the narrow alley. The alleys are dark even during the day, like the bottom of a valley, and there is no sunlight even in the summer, which is a blessing in the extremely hot Hanoi, but it is blocked by dense buildings, making it difficult for the wind to pass through, so it is not a good living environment. 

A conventional tube house has a staircase and water area in the center, and private rooms on the road side and on the opposite side. If we follow it, the inside of the building will be divided into smaller parts. Therefore, this time , we considered the entire volume as one large undifferentiated staircase space, and expanded the landing area to have its own characteristics, such as under the top lights, a space facing the garden on the east side, and a space facing the alley side. We try to create a ``place to be,'' rather than a room, where you can choose freely depending on the time of day and how you spend your time. On the lower floors, the staircase ascends in a large elliptical orbit along the wall, but as it ascends to the upper floors, it transforms into a circular spiral in the center of the house. A top light is installed at the top of the circular atrium, and sunlight is reflected off the spiral white handrail and delivered to the lower floors. Warm air rises from the lower floor through the atrium, providing gravity ventilation. The upper floor has private bedrooms for the couple and their two children, but in the future, after the children leave the house, the walls will be removed and each will have a new landing space.

There is a field on the roof where vegetables and fruits are grown, and a large concrete roof covers all sides. When the folding doors are opened, the entire rooftop becomes one unified space, the top landing, and the warm air rising from the center of the stairs is released to the outside. In northern Vietnam, red tin roofs are popular with pitched roofs such as gables , but this time the cambered roof allows sufficient sunlight to reach the field on the roof, increasing the speed of wind blowing through it and improving the ventilation effect of the entire building. At the same time, the façade has become almost invisible in the alley, becoming one of the few elements that characterize the exterior of this house.

So what would happen to the facade? In such an high-density area where the neighboring houses are close together, the facades are probably meant for the house across the street. In particular, the landing, which is used as a reading room, is opposite the semi-outdoor kitchen of the house across the street, and this facade becomes an interior elevation over there. While giving consideration to each other's privacy and contributing to each other's design, we constructed a screen using a unique brickwork that creates depth while creating openings for ventilation. From indoors, it serves as a backdrop for the small garden in front of it, and when combined with the plants placed across from it, it becomes a wall that creates a rich color palette.