HOT AIR II: THE EQUATORIAL CITY THE ARCHITECTURE OF ATMOSPHERE AND CARBON FORM
Image: Alberto Prieto & Le Hoang Nguyen, 2021
AR5802
HOT AIR: THE DRAMATIC ATMOSPHERES OF THE EQUATORIAL CITY AND CARBON FORM TOO
Introduction accounting
Virtual Tools
WK12 Trip to HCMC
Ho Chi Minh City location plan
2019
1 D3 72 Dung Trn Quc Ton Building
2 D1 12 Võ Văn Kiệt Building
3 D1 Nguyen Träi Building
4 D1 Büi Vin Building
5 D4 Cu Xá Doàn Vän Bo Building
6 D1 Hòa Lu Hotel
2022
7 D1 36 Ton That Dam Street
8 D5 96 Châu Văn Liêm
9 D1 9 Nguyen Cong Tru Street
10 D1 Cho Ba Chieu Market
11 D1 General Science Library
12 D1 187-189 Nguyễn Thái Bình Street
Adaptive Reuse Projects
01 VAR, District 1
Celine & Nerea
Anthony & Valentina
Hankang & Lei
02 VVK, District 1
Syafiq & Cynthia
Jack & Teresa
Kaiyi & Yilun
Studio Documentation References
Counting carbon, cost of labour & materials
The design research will propose adaptive reuse of examples of robust and compelling mid-twentieth century tropical buildings (from 1930-1980) selected by the student teams. The students will study the precedents through formal, atmospheric, and material systems and understand how these buildings are situated in the ecosystem of HCMC and the more prominent material ecosystem from which they are formed. Students will then propose adaptively reuse of the buildings, expanding their area while making informed material choices considering Life Cycle Analysis, operational and embodied carbon. The research outcomes will expand students’ capability beyond the optic and iconic to the climatic and atmospheric in consideration of carbon and lifecycle concerns.
Studio average time spent: 606.2 hours
Studio average cost: $332.50
Grand Tour with today’s virtual technologies
In light of the Covid-19 travel restrictions, the travelling studio explored Ho Chi Minh City virtually. The studio made use digital tools such as Google Street View as well as other online resources to make informed decisions on the case studies done.
Analyzing Southern Vietnamese Modernist Architecture
Extrapolated from Studio ELH 2019
kg CO2e
Located in one of dense neighbourhood of District 3, this mid-century modernist building stands out from surrounding narrow tube houses in terms of its scale and arrangement. As a residential building, it consists of three building blocks of different height and orientation connecting to one another. The three building blocks wrap around to form an internal courtyard facing to the south to capture Ho Chi Ming City’s prevailing wind.
The highest building block with 5 storys is placing on the west side to shade off the internal courtyard and the other two lower blocks from the western solar radiation. The external facade of this residential building is quite blank with only several openings for exhausting while the architect put all of the energy on the internal facade facing the courtyard.
Living units are setback at each floor to allow a decent single-loaded ventilation corridor going along each floor which also served as the eaves for the floor below to shade off the solar radiation.
On top of the architectural elements, the owner of each unit used to add their own canvases at the corridor in front of their flats to shade off more of their facade as well as claiming their ownership at the particular session along the corridor.
8, 72 Đường Trần Quốc Toản, Quàn 3, Hö Chi Minh, Vietnam
Architect: Unknown
Year: Unknown
// Jack, Teresa
Extrapolated from Studio ELH 2019
Located in District 1, the Võ Văn Kiet Building is a study that stands out from the rest as one hardly gets to observe such a tall, towering modern architectural beast in Ho Chi Minh.
Designed by Nguyen Văn Hoá in the 1960s, the building is separated into two programatically. Programatically the lower six floors serve as space to facilitate office and commercial programmes, with a school being the largest tenant of them all, located on the sixth floor. The upper six floors on the other hand are purely residential in nature, but consequentially, one begins to view very colourful and personalised expressions of individual character on the facades of these upper floors, as users spill out their belongings outside of their own units into commonly shared balconies and corridors. and yet despite this, a sense of harmony is still achieved betwen neighbours.
The Võ Văn Kiet Building also has a courtyard that serves the residents on 1) the ground floor; 2) the sixth floor.
This helps to ventilate the deep plan of the first 6 storeys.
(Text above from Hogen Oswald Salim Huang, 2019)
To calibrate to the hot and wet climate of Ho Chi Minh, the building is veiled by a rigid frame that performs as a brise-soleil. The corridor space behind this veil further provides an air buffer for the interior walls, which is leaky and porous as doors and windows are left open even during rain in order to let the breeze into the units. This rigid frame is also interestingly flexible enough to accomodate various aggregations by the inhabitants to further protect the their common spaces.
Võ Văn Kiet Building
12 Võ Văn Kiet Boulevard, Phưng Nguyen Thái Bìn, Quan 1, Ho Chí Minh City, Vietnam
Architect:Nguyen Văn Hoá
Year: 1960s
// Syafiq
Sharlyn Hwang, 2019
Sharlyn Hwang, 2019
Extrapolated from Studio ELH 2019
Built before 1975, this 7 storey apartment building contains about 60 residential units along with a commercial ground floor, with some of its residential units having since been transformed into home-stays or humble businesses. Notably, this building is recently on the government’s list of being demolished, primarily due to its old age and deterioration, as well as its prime location in District 1. The Nguyen Trãi Building is situated on a corner plot, flanked by a park (on Lê Lai Street) with a bus interchange further down, and Nguy n Trãi Street, with its tube houses, housing hotels and commercial businesses. Its adherence to the plot boundary along the edges ceases when the street turns the corner. The building chamfers and creates a continuous façade, linking both elevations together for a continuous street front. This thereby establishes the architecture to be read not only as a building, but as an object as well. Its modernist features also consist of breeze blocks, vertical ventilation vents and sun-shading devices which emphasise the horizontal edges.The pervasiveness of the horizontal sun-shading device applied on both elevations of the building can be seen as a way to deal with the solar radiation in Ho Chi Minh City. Notably, the South elevation consists of greater informal shading additions as compared to the North elevation; an indication of how the tenants infill the formal architectural frame with a suggestion of the informalities of life. Over time, the informal of the building overrides the formality of the standard column grid system. This can be seen on the elevation, on a vertical stack of units, certain units span 2 bays (based on similar windows/ awnings) while others seemingly span 5 bays wide. Eventually, these modifications and informalities further add on to the collectiveness of the building, as well as providing a secondary layer of information as to how the formal structure is able to cater to the way the city changes over time. (Sharlyn
Hwang & Siti Nur Farah, 2019)Nguyen Trãi Building
145 Nguyen Trãi, P. Ben Thành - Q.1, Phưng Phạm Ngũ Lão Quan 1, Ho Chí Minh, Vietnam
Architect: Unknown Year: 1975
// Celine, Nerea
Extrapolated from Studio ELH 2019
kg CO2e
Located along Bui Vien walking street, a crowded place and also a famous cultural tourist spot in Ho Chi Minh City, the building is one of the oldest residential apartments that was built before 1975. It accommodates 80 households with a ground floor, a terrace and six floors. It has a reinforced concrete structure with a floor area of over 4,000 sqm. Sandwiched in between narrow tube houses, the building stands out as a mid-century modernist building as one walks through a valley of malignant infrastructure and sheer cement walls down the street. The facade of the building is characterised by a strong horizontal element, achieved by bands of framed windows and doors that is set back and shaded by a continuous reinforced concrete sun shading and balconies. As such, it stands out as an object due to its modernist characteristics including its curved edge from its front elevation towards its West elevation.
Apartments here are between 20 and 60 sqm where most lack proper ventilation. In an attempt to improve their indoor living conditions, extra windows were knocked into the walls. The front elevation of the building gives a strong indication of adaptation, modification and collectivism. Despite having a clear frame showing the different units, each enclosed boundary within the frame portrays a unique characteristic from the other. The spillage of the informal aggregate beyond the formal structure shows the various ways in which the inhabitants make use of a certain space according to their needs. The different configurations of plants, laundry, air-conditioner compressors, blinds and awnings dictates the architecture of aggregate of the city. It goes to show how the modernist structure, despite being formal, is still able to slowly adapt towards the present day needs.
BUI VIEN BUILDING
Bùi Viện, Phường Phạm Ngũ Lão, Quàn 1, Hö Chi Minh, Vietnam
Architect: Unknown Year: Unknown
// Ding Kaiyi, Wu Yilun
Extrapolated from Studio ELH 2019
kg CO2e
Cu XáĐoàn Văn Bo Building is located in District 4 of Ho Chi Minh City, where small-scale commercial houses composed of commercial and residential properties are very dense. This makes the huge volume of the Cu XáĐoàn Văn Bo Building stand out. It is primarily a mixed commercial and residential building. The store on the first floor of the whole house is transparent from front to back, which can provide a more comfortable business environment. By observing the facades of the first and second floors, it can be found that there are two rows of windows on the upper and lower floors, which can be seen through the store signs on the first floor. Each store is very narrow, so it is speculated that there may be a mezzanine on the first floor to expand the commercial operation space. The second floor is to accommodate more merchants, so it corresponds to the commercial space on the first floor, as a living space, and also has a mezzanine, so as to accommodate as many living functions as possible in a narrow space. The upper floor is a larger residential space, and each traffic stair core tube corresponds to two houses. Its characteristics are that the floors are relatively short, and each floor has a long balcony space that can play a better shading effect. On the whole, the whole house has different façade effects due to its facing different streets. Because of the large traffic flow on the south and west streets, there are more businesses facing the streets on both sides. However, facing the two streets The houses on the upper floors on the side are less likely to dry clothes or grow plants on the balcony due to reasons such as privacy or noise or light. On the contrary, in the courtyard part facing the north side, because there are fewer people passing through the streets on the north side, although there is less commercial atmosphere, the atmosphere of life is stronger. People like to put their lives (growing plants, raising animals, drying clothes) are here.
Cư Xá Đoàn Văn Bơ Building
Hem 154 Cư Xá Đoàn Văn Bơ Quan 4, Ho Chí Minh City, Vietnam
Architect: Unknown Year: Unknown
// Yang Hankang, Liu Lei
Extrapolated from Studio ELH 2019
kg CO2e
The Hòa Lu Hotel is one of Ho Chi Minh City’s modernist buildings located in District one, truly one of the city’s best examples of Vietnamese architecture.
Like most of the buildings, HLH information remains obscured, there’s no written record of the architect responsible for this design. In fact, the only data available it’s its year of construction 1964. Although there’s no one to take credit for this work; the fact remains, that this project is an exemplification of many qualities of the modernist composition.
For one instance, it continues with the city’s urban fabric of fragmentation. The external railings, internal corridor, and inner space form part of the tripartite system of the building also shown in the façade. The design of the façade is displayed in three fragments one on each side and the crowning round piece. Lastly, the upper piece design, that is a typical for the time, is a shading element that highlights the building
It is also essential to analyze the response to the tropical climate. The architect decided to use the internal corridor as a way to shade the inner façade and lower the heat inside. However, the permeable outer skin allows the air to flow to the inside of the building going all the way through a corridor as shown in the negative drawing. Essentially, the building is a response to the tropical climate and modernist movement in Vietnam.
Hòa Lu Hotel
59 Nguyen Träi, Phung Pham Ngü Läo, Quàn 1, Hö Chi Minh, Vietnam
Architect: Unknown
Year: 1964
// Anthony, Valentina
Embodied Carbon
kg CO2e
This building stands as one of the first examples of the bruise-soleil design in Vietnam. It is now the office for a banking school.
Two set of vertical bruise-soleil are hanged outside of the windows of the second and third floor. They are facing the southeast and southwest direction, blocking the low angle rays of Sun at daytime. They also create frames to trap the thickness of air and bear the thermal load. At the corner of the building, the vertical bruise-soleil turn into horizontal shadings in order to block the high angle rays of the Sun at noon time.
Since the building is an office, the interiors are probably open spaces without corridors. In response to these deep interiors, there is a courtyard in the middle of the building for ventilation. The first floor slab, which is the ceiling of the basement, is lifted up to create a short wall of louvers for the ventilation for underground car parking.
On top of the ceiling of the third floor, there was an attic space. You can see a horizontal layer of louvers and windows on the outside wall above the bruise-soleil. It used to be the double roof so that when the Sun heated up the roof terrace deck, the indoor of the third floor would not get so much heat induction. However, the latter owner of the building eventually made the double roof space into a floor of normal height by adding a half-floor. The added volume replaced the modernist railingis and the roof deck, but the subtly-appealing butterfly roof on top of the eastern staircase was kept.
36 Tôn Thất Đạm
Phường Nguyễn Thái Bình, Quàn 1, Hö Chi Minh, Vietnam
Architect: Nguyễn Văn Hoa
Year: Unknown
// Jack, Teresa
Embodied Carbon 40,206,674 kg CO2e
This shophouse in District Five sits on an assymmetrical corner lot. It is a visually curious building due to its unique compositon that is unusual in Ho Chi Minh City. It is interesting because of its assemblage of vertical and horizontal parts that further emphasise its asymmetry. This building also demonstrates care to human scale because of the scale of the parts, making it look light.
Climatically, the building makes use of a double corridor to protect the interior spaces. Despite being on a small lot, when viewed from Google Earth, a small air shaft can be seen puncturing the centre of the building, providing ventilation for the core and the interior spaces. The hooded windows perform well against the afternoon sun and the western sun.
Compositionally, the horizontal planters and vertical bars give the building a modern and crisp compositon, and are intentionally used to reflect the asymmetry of the lot and to tie the entire composition of the building together using a language of crisp horizontality and verticality.
House at 96 Châu Văn Liêm
96 Đ. Châu Văn Liêm
96 Đ. Châu Văn Liêm,Phường 11
Quận 5, Ho Chí Minh City, Vietnam
Architect: Unknown
Year: 1970s
// Cynthia
9
Embodied Carbon
kg CO2e
The V.A.R is an office building located in District one of Ho Chi Minh, crowning a corner between the streets Nguyên Công Trứ and Ho Tung Maju street.
Built in 1973 by the Vietnamese architect Le Van Lam, who was one of the architects that set the foundations of the Vietnamese modernist movement. He made important contributions in tropicalizing modernist architecture to adapt to the hot and humid climate of Vietnam. The most characteristic element of the building is the brise soleil on its façade, that makes this eight-story massive building look light and lacy. The structure of the building is well expressed, and we can see how the beams are extended beyond the outer skin and become part of the brise soleil. The façade is actually a double wall, separated by a 1-meter service corridor. The façade is dynamic, and it looks like it is in movement as the horizontal pieces are set back 5cm from the vertical ones. However, as the vertical elements don’t pass through, the horizontality of the façade is maintained, connecting both streets with its continuity.
The function of the brise soleil is usually to reduce the sun and rain exposure, but in this case, as the façade of the building is facing the north-east, its purpose is mostly for decoration and identity of Vietnamese modernist architecture.
V.A.R. Building
9 Ho Tung Mau Street in Nguyen Thai Binh Ward, Disrtict 1, Hö Chi Minh, Vietnam
Architect: Lê Văn Lắm
Year: 1973
// Celine, Nerea
Embodied Carbon
kg CO2e
Local markets play an inseparable part of Vietnamese life. And visiting Ba Chieu Market is the best recommendations for anyone who wants to observe how the Vietnamese make a living. Ba Chieu is an old, bustling local market with nostalgic charm. Built in 1942 in what is today’s Binh Thanh District, Ba Chieu Market has remained largely the same despite Saigon’s rapid urbanization and development. The Market is separated into 2 particular parts:dry and wet. The dry market inside the building is operated by several merchants who sell mainly clothing, shoes, bags or cosmetics with the back of market is full of grocery shops and fresh produce.
Ba Chieu Market runs from north to south and consists of three parts, the drawing shows a north part.The building body is a concrete frame structure with a total of two floors, first floor is used for shops, and the second floor is mainly used for storage.
We can see traces of brutalism from the architecture. There are a lot of geometric elements on the façade with a strong sense of composition. For thermal insulation reasons, there is not a lot of glass used for lighting, and the interior is also very dim, requiring artificial light sources for lighting. The building itself is full-height, with three entrances and a double-layered roof. In addition to the extensive use of concrete, there are also some wooden structures.And A large number of geometrical ventilation windows facilitate the exchange of hot air
BA CHIEU MARKET
Phường 1, Bình Thạnh, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh Hö Chi Minh, Vietnam
Architect: Unknown Year: 1942
// Ding Kaiyi, Wu Yilun
Embodied Carbon 351635994 kg CO2e
The General Sciences Library of Ho Chi Minh City, one of the largest libraries in South Vietnam, provides a wide range of services from Ninh Thuan to Minh Hai provinces. It is responsible for collecting and maintaining materials of all kinds published inside and outside the country. With 700,000 copies, the library serves approximately 150,000 users yearly. At the same time, the library performs many other functions. These include providing bibliographic information, helping the provincial libraries compile regional bibliographies, preparing topical bibliographies and a union catalog of books published in South Vietnam and issuing a bulletin called Library Information Bulletin of South Vietnam. Professionally, the library organizes and carries out training courses to improve professional skills of staff and arranges topical conferences for libraries of the districts and provinces.
The most prominent feature of the entire building is the façade. The east-west hollowed-out façade combines the local traditional decoration and introduces natural ventilation. The wind blows from the east and west sides, enters the atrium through the hollowed-out window holes, and reaches the double-layered roof, which effectively reduces the indoor temperature.
General Science Library
69 Lý Tự Trọng, Phường Bến Thành, Quận 1, Thành phố Hồ Chí Minh, Vietnam
Architect: Nguyễn Hữu Thiện and Bùi Quang Hanh
Year: 1972
// Yang Hankang, Liu Lei
The 187-189 Nguyên Thai Binh Street is one of Ho Chi Minh City’s modernist buildings located in District one, one of the city’s hidden gems.
Sadly, there’s not much information available about this small piece of modernist Vietnamese architecture. The architect and year of construction are unknown, yet its singularity in design cannot be denied.
The building is best known of the alternating wooden screen, that acts as a brise soleil and thus prevents the sun from heating up the southwest inner wall. This repetitive outer skin emphasizes the horizontality by the consistent language of the brise soleil and the continuous slabs. As the buildings coronation, we can see a upper terrace and butterfly roof that is one of the first-seen design that aids the drainage of the constant rain of the tropical climate.
It’s also important to highlight the use of timber, which evokes a sense of lightness and texture to which humans can more readily relate and respond to. Which was quite uncommon for modernist architecture because of the constant use of concrete as the main and sole material.
Undoubtedly, this building presents a continuous appearance, unusual in comparison the highly modular facades of modernist architecture.
187-189 Nguyên Thai Binh Street
Phuöng Nguyên Thai Binh, Quàn 1, Thänh phô Hö Chi Minh, Vietnam
Architect: Unknown
Year: Unknown
// Anthony, Valentina
Adaptive Reuse
Site 02 Võ Văn Kiet Building [VVK] District 1 Site 01 V.A.R Building District 1 1 Syafiq & Cynthia 2 Teresa & Jack 3 Kaiyi & Yilun 1 Celine & Nerea 2 Anthony & Valentina 3 Hankang & LeiBeing the corner piece between two streets, the V.A.R is a building to conserve and emphasise in its totality. Respecting the existing architecture, the extension has been made to one side, pretending not to be too radical on the urban fabric and maintaining the existing brise soleil as a unique element of the site.
The new additional volume creates a courtyard in the middle of the new building, acting like the heart and liveliness of the building. This is the access to the building, going through the brick envelope and finding yourself in the middle of the lively courtyard. This space is of public access and it allows to make a relation to the second courtyard placed on the back facade, which is also public and full of small commerces. Connecting both spaces, a vibrant and transited space is created.
The existing building is wrapped by a brick planar brise soleil, which contrasts with the very dynamic existing one. It follows the grid of the structure of the building and the terracotta colour on the outside aims to catch all the heat of the solar radiation, creating a double wall system for a more comfortable climate inside.
Embodied Carbon
kg CO2e
The new addition serves as a “panama hat” to the V.A.R that enhances the interior conditions of the existing and operationally saves carbon in the long run. A structural platform sits above the top level of V.A.R presenting a tabula rasa. Higher levels boast better microclimate with open views towards the river; a safe haven, free from the constant droning of motorbikes, dust and the chaos of HCMC. This new environment was the perfect opportunity to create a secondary ground floor, a plaza that serves as an extension of the life on the ground floor for people to gather, away from Ho Chi Minh’s notorious traffic congestion. Hidden Saigon is a climatic device, functioning as the heart of District 1 community.
The upper blocks built on the structural platform emulates the characteristics of the existing row houses of HCMC. In an effort to capture the granularity of the city, the blocks vary in height based on solar radiation analysis. Each block consist of parallel walls that sample the row houses but with a twist. To add greater dynamics to the sampling of the city, the walls themselves are bent to funnel the prevailing wind coming from the south to produce a venturi effect. This will in turn create a negative air pressure that will suck out air from the existing V.A.R and facilitate passive natural ventilation and cool the interior spaces.
The facade for the upper blocks are breeze block modules, ensuring that flow of wind is sustained. The grid of these modules as well as the shifting of the grid is adapted from the existing V.A.R brise soleil. This creates a relationship but at the same time contrast with the existing which is porous and light whereas the breeze block modules are more opaque. Additionally, the subtle facade also serves another intention of making the blocks inward looking; hinting to a more vibrant life on the inner side, hidden away from the hustle and bustle of HCMC, creating a contrast of environments.
In sum, the venturi strategy and result of the aggregation of the upper blocks addresses the projects’ relationship to the block, street continuity, verticality and climate.
The first consideration in our design is that since it is built on an old building, we must try to find the factors that the old building can be used or transformed to make it better. So, according to this we found two important factors: the roof and the atrium.
Then, we continued our design based on these two points. The main measures are: 1. Extending and expanding the atrium of the original building to enhance the natural ventilation effect of the old and new buildings; 2. Continuing the building in a ring form around the atrium 3. Set up a façade that can guide the wind direction according to the main wind direction of the site; 4. Naturalize the roof space or gray space.
In terms of details, for the façade, we have adopted a double-layer façade: the outer façade is a green surface, which is used to cool the air and wind entering the building. The internal measurement façade adopts oblique louvers, which are inclined according to the main wind direction of the site to introduce the wind into the atrium and discharge it. The two cooperate with each other to play the role of sunshade and rain protection. For the grey space, we try to turn it into a jungle in the city. The fifth and sixth facades of the building (roof and bottom of the building) are opened to connect the interior space with the natural jungle to achieve a good cooling effect.
These measures cooperate and cooperate with each other to form a new building with nature and natural ventilation as the main measure.
// Yang Hankang, Liu Lei
The project is interested in the ornamentation and poetic expression of modernist elements found in the architecture of a select group of post-war midcentury modernist Vietnamese architects. Often these ornaments are found to express and clarify ideas of form and composition rather than for performative reasons. We were intrigued by the eccentricity found in the ornamentation of a select group of buildings, which we saw as a reflection of the dynamic urban experience of Ho Chi Minh.
Continuing from the formal reading of the existing VVK building as a podium with a T-shaped object on top, we extended the podium as a base for the new objects to sit on. The strategy of the addition to the existing VVK building is through aggregation of new objects strategically positioned for formal and performative reasons. Through basic formal operations such as rotation and interlocking, the new additions are differentiated from the existing building. We liked the idea that these objects could have their own personalities and formally be read as different objects that sat on a podium. The object that defies the main axis is given a rougher treatment with sharp and crisp edges, while the other two objects are given a softer treatment through scallops and curves. Sampling from modernist architecture elements and giving them a playful and expressive twist with experimentation of color, the project is an artistic and intellectual experimentation with composition of form and basic architectural elements - which in the tropics include elements that mitigate the mediums of Hot Air such as brise-soleil, hooded windows, breeze blocks and so on. Questions of color and how to use color performatively and atmospherically also plays itself into the architecture, creating an overall playfulcomposition of objects within the dominantly concrete urban fabric.
This design is emodied with a future vision. As the cities grow, buildings will be tightly packed and got separated from each other by party walls. We are well aware of the necessity of in-between spaces and they are developed in two aspects - firstly, in between our own building and adjacent buildings, secondly, in between the original building and the adaptive reuse part.
The design was first triggered from flipping the existing volume. In such way, the new and old are interlocked and create a trans-dimensional slit. We further developed the concept of flipping by introducing it all over the building. We keep the columns and beams in the existing blocks and add a new hanging portal system so that the slits become obvious and stand out.
All the outer facades on the new volume serve as strategies to respond to every different elements in the nature. They are unified in the same language which the planes are set back on the basis of composition of De Stijl. The advance and retreat on the side walls create slits for ventilation. The party walls trun into slits for air to flow in a vertical way, bringing fresh air and wind to the units. For the roof, the planar composition serve as sun shading and the invagination is the reservoir for cooling down temperature on the roof. The podium might be noisy because of the rebounce of sound from the bustling main road. Therefore, the last storey is recessed to lower the kinetic energy of the sound particles. The language of verticality on the original facades is kept by adopting the same module on the ornamental and meaningless vertical lines. All these functional facades complete an intact systm in this building.
We regard this proposal as a reply to the historical urban fabric of HCMC. In other districts from HCMC, the fabric is dense and complicated, which represents a specific kind of collective living style. In contrast, the fabric of our site becomes highly-structured and regularized due to the systematic planning of the waterfront area, which could be tracing back to the colonized period in the Vietnam War. As a continuation of the VVK building and the historical fabric, we aimed to build a pure cubic volume which can be recognized as the twins from VVK to fill in the street corner in reply to the city, as well as a supplement for the urban interface, which should be solemn and stable.
In terms of the climatical reply, as well as a connection of the public spaces, we designed to keep the remaining courtyard and use spatial strategies to increase the accessibility to all the buildings surrounded. For instance, we are trying to shape the volume and make holes according to the prevailing wind direction which is from the west. As a result, we would like to create a void inside that is of human scale which provides not only vibrant activities but also ventilation of high quality.
To sum up our proposal, we hope to create a sharp contrast in this characteristic site — a geometric and monolithic urban interface outside, and then a vibrant negative and highly-accessible void inside.
Studio Documentation
Cost of site model: $771.75
Time elapsed: 3 weeks
Construction period: 27 Jan 2022 - 16 Feb 2022
late night working
Hot Air
M. Arch 1 Sem 02
Erik L’Heureux
Department of Architecture
College of Design and Engineering
