VietNamNet Bridge - A few years ago, only architect Vo Trong Nghia and his colleagues were interested in attending international competitions and won dozens of awards. However, recently, more and more Vietnamese architects have become more well-known internationally.

1. The Chapel - Buildings of the Year at World Architecture Festival

The greatest success of Vietnam in 2014 is the World Building of the Year Award for “The Chapel/a21 Studio” work by architect Nguyen Hoa Hiep at the World Architecture Festival. The Chapel was also winner of the Small Project of the Year, Landscape of the Year and Future Project of the Year awards.

The Chapel is a community space in a new urban ward on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City. As the result of the real estate crisis, the surrounding area lacks communal centers, so the Chapel was designed to be a place for people to participate in activities such as conferences, weddings and exhibitions.

At this year’s World Architecture Festival, the Vo Trong Nghia Architects company won three prizes in the education category (FPT University Building in Ha Noi), house category (the House of Trees in Tan Binh District, HCM City) and the hotel and leisure category (Son La Restaurant).

Students from HCM City Architecture University won first prize in the student category with their building for the future, entitled Restoring Nature Life.

The festival, which took place in Singapore from October 1-3, attracted 200 projects from 50 countries around the globe competing in 20 main categories. Many of the world’s leading architectural firms, such as ZahaHaid Architects, OMA, Foster + Partners, BIG, Woods Bagot, KPF and Farrells, attended the event.

2. House of Trees of Vo Trong Nghia, Masaaki Iwamoto, and Kosuke Nishijima

House of Trees by Vietnamese studio Vo Trong Nghia Architects won first prize at the 5th AR House Awards 2014. The work was honoured as the best work to help deal with urban pollution.

Designed by architects Vo Trong Nghia, Masaaki Iwamoto, and Kosuke Nishijima, House of Trees is a two-bedroom home for a family of three.

Five concrete boxes are designed as “pots” to plant trees on the top. With thick soil layer, these pots also function as storm-water basins for detention and retention. This would help to reduce the risk of flooding in the city when the building idea is replicated in the future.

The house is located in Tan Binh district, one of the most densely populated residential areas in HCM City, which has just 0.25 per cent of its area covered in greenery, according to the architects.

In HCM City, for example, only 0.25 per cent area of the entire city is covered with greenery. An over-abundance of motorcycles causes daily traffic congestion as well as serious air pollution.

As a result, new generations in urban areas are losing their connection with nature. House of Trees, a prototypical house within a tight budget of US$156,000, is an effort to change this situation. The aim of the project is to bring back green space into the city and accommodate a high-density dwelling with big tropical trees.

Based on the ideas of potted plants, trees grown on rooftops will bring about green surroundings and fresh air for the housing complex and help reduce tensions for house owners as well as the use of energy. This is the first work in Vietnam that employs bamboo-reinforced concrete.

AR House Awards is an internationally renowned architecture award granted annually by Architectural Review for the best architectural work of the year.

With numerous awards gained both at home and abroad, Vo Trong Nghia Architects brought home many awards this year, including awards from Wallpaper magazine in the UK and ArchDaily in the US for his Binh Thanh House.

3. FPT Administrative Building wins 'Education' category at World Architecture Festival

The building is located in the Hoa Lac Hightech Park, 34 kilometers away from Hanoi. The project is a seven-storey modern and eco-friendly building. The facade is designed in checkerboard style (solid and opened squares) with dwarf trees inside the openings. The roof is covered with grass and big plants to create a refreshing space for staff and to protect the building from sunlight.

Designed to evoke the image of a flying dragon, the building’s curved shape and green additions help to soften the harsh appearance of stacked modular concrete blocks. Since the building serves as a gateway to the school, the architects used its prominent position in the landscape to promote sustainable development in Vietnam, a country suffering from increasing pollution due to rapid industrialization.

To cut down on the building’s reliance on air conditioning, the architects oriented the building to face the prevailing wind to take advantage of cross ventilation. The large trees located in each balcony help cool the airflow before it reaches the interior. The shallow plan and abundant glazing allow natural light to filter through the building and reduce dependence on artificial lighting.

4. Son La Restaurant

The Son La Restaurant won the hotel and leisure category at the World Architecture Festival 2014. It was also designed by Vietnamese firm Vo Trong Nghia Architects.

Precarious cliff roads provide the only access to the site from Hanoi, the nearest city, so the architects had to develop a design that could be easily constructed by local builders using materials that are readily available nearby.

"Due to difficult terrain, Son La is only accessible from Hanoi by a seven-hour car trip," said the architect team. "With this situation, local bamboo and stonework were selected to be the main materials of the building."

The restaurant's layout is defined by eight pavilion-like structures with stone walls, which frame the sheltered open-air dining area. Varying in size, these small buildings each contain either one or two storeys.

"To adopt to the tropical monsoon climate – with a wet season that is hot with high humidity and strong rains, and a more temperate but still hot dry season – the building is composed of separate buildings and an open-air dining hall to supply both contained air-conditioned rooms and comfortable external dining," said the team.

A local bamboo known as luong, which can grow to a height of eight metres, was chosen for the restaurant's main structure, creating a criss-crossed grid that the architects say is "like a bamboo forest".

The material was prepared using a traditional Vietnamese building method, which involves soaking the bamboo in mud and then smoking it. Lengths are then held together using dowel nails and rope.

The stone used for the surrounding structures was sourced from within a ten-kilometre radius.

The roof is covered in thatch, made waterproof with a layer of transparent plastic.

Son La Restaurant is the first building in the proposed hotel development, which will also include a conference centre and cafe.

Stepping stones lead across a pool of water at the building's entrance, and hundreds of peach trees have been planted in the surrounds.

5. Dailai Bamboo Complex - ARCASIA Awards for Architecture 2014

Bamboo Wing.

Shorty after winning the RA 2014 House Awards for their “House of Trees”, Vo Trong Nghia Architects made news again with their “Dailai Bamboo Complex”, winning the AAA 2014 (ARCASIA Awards for Architecture 2014) out of 276 submissions in 10 Categories of which 60 projects were shortlisted. The Dailai Bamboo Complex consists of the Dailai Conference Hall built in 2012 and the earlier Bamboo wing built in 2009.

Bamboo Wing: Surrounded by nature nearby Hanoi, Bamboo Wing is a pure bamboo cantilever structure flying over the sky like bird wings.

This 12-meter-wide structure balances itself on one leg and has a spacious free space without any columns on its sides, serving the function of a culture center to hold fashion shows, live music concerts and conferences.

The openness of the building, thanks to its structure, helps people inside feel as if they are living in nature.

The shape of the roof is suitable to take cool wind into the building through the surrounding pond, and the deep eaves cast their shadow on the floor, making a comfortable thermal environment without using air conditioners.

Dailai Conference Hall: A residential resort, named Flamingo Dailai Resort, is located in the middle of flourishing forests between Dailai Lake and surrounding mountains, about 50 km away from Hanoi. The lot of Dailai Conference Hall is located beside the main access road, which is used as an entrance for the resort; the building welcomes all visitors when they come.

To enhance their expectation of a delightful stay in the resort, an impressive curved stone wall along the road was designed like a “receptionist” offering a sequential view to visitors, revealing and screening the surrounding nature from place to place. An orthogonal access between artificial hills conducts visitors through the stone wall, then visitors reach a foyer covered by a dynamic bamboo structure with an extraordinary scale.

The wide-span structure of the conference hall consists of the composition of straight bamboo. Many bamboos are assembled into a structural frame, which has higher reliability and redundancy than bamboo used individually. Bamboo and stone are abundant natural resources near the area. The hall achieves its originality and special atmosphere by using these local materials. The building is a friendly accompaniment to nature.

Compiled by T. Van