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Architects: MA Architects Vietnam
- Area: 100 m²
- Year: 2022
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Photographs:Paul Phan
Text description provided by the architects. MA architects, five years of experience working in rental offices, stable, narrow, inflexible spaces with difficulties of owner’s stories, air conditioner, surrounded environment that architectural offices in Ho Chi Minh City mostly face daily…
MA architects have thought about an office space where they come to share, work, and dream in the slight wind, natural light, green trees, sand, rain, and wood. MA considers these elements like a seed, in which everyone plays as an embryo, nourished in mind and body by the sun, wind, rain, and air with plants and birds and covered by a layer of concrete walls and eco-tin roofing sheets. The plot, with a popular size in Ho Chi Minh City, 5x20m, is planned to use resources such as the bare ground and the yard, which is self-absorbed and evaporated to reduce the heat in hot weather—reusing old wood to make the carcass, beams, trusses, floor, and columns with the natural structure—the outside covers as a test with the brick walls eco tin roofing sheets.
Starting with the bare ground, MA tackled the ground, floor, and wall to make a stable base and cover. Then, MA is erecting the wooden beams, columns, structural framework, planting trees, etc. Bringing the furniture inside the office at last. The organization of the construction process is carefully calculated in reality, including material features, space features, less construction time, installation, and budget.
With the limit in the budget, the materials used are their own colors and textures to complete the project. For wood, MA only used old woods, treated the surface, and erected. The cover - the surrounding wall is rawly built and completed with a waterproof layer to create a good cover for the office and avoid the effects of rain and sun.
About the floor, in addition to the cement concrete floor of the working area, the remaining area is the bare ground, compacted tightly with a layer of small stones and finished with a compacted sand layer on the top. This creates a natural color, is self-absorbed whenever it rains, and decreases the hot temperature by the way of watering the sand in rough weather. The roof uses eco tin and light roofing sheets, and on top are dried coconut leaves to lighten, insulate, and reduce noise. Trees are carefully chosen in size, type, etc., to bring inside the project.
