Small Brick House / Tung Nguyen Architects
Text description provided by the architects. A 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 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 the northwest, which is very sunny in the afternoon. On the 2nd floor, we created 2 layers of inner and outer walls with the balcony in the middle. The windows are arranged in soles of each other and combined with green plants to block sunlight that comes directly into the bedroom.
The indoor space is designed in a minimalist style with all spaces on the first floor being a common space without walls separating the living room, the dining 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, and an iron stair connects to the rooftop through the atrium in the middle of the house.
We use locally available rustic natural materials and handmade products. Therefore, bare brick, bare concrete, grinding stone, and natural oak combined with iron stairs are the main materials used for the project with the desire to create rusticity and be close to nature.
