Vietnam firm wins architecture ’Oscars'

Different aspect: People inside the house sense time and weather through shadow and air. (Source: archdaily.com

Vietnamese design company H&P Architects has recently been named among the July Winners and Popular Choice Winners of the Architizer A+Awards.

The company was awarded for its Brick Cave design in a suburban commune of Hanoi in the Private House and Architecture Brick categories.

The Architizer A Awards focus on promoting and celebrating the year’s best architectural works. Its mission is to nurture the appreciation of architecture in the world and champion its potential for a positive impact on everyday life.

The A Awards live at Architizer.com is a large online community of architects. Entries are judged by a panel of more than 400 distinguished luminaries and thought leaders from fields as diverse as fashion, publishing, product design, real estate development and tech. Finalists and winners are recognised as the year’s most influential visionaries.

This year, more than 5,000 entries from over 100 nations competed for the awards.

The Brick Cave was built in 2007 covering nearly 300sq.m and designed with a philosophy that it will help shape a place similar to the natural environment in an artificial manner.

The overall structure is made up of and enclosed by two layers of brick wall meeting at an intersection, with alternate ‘green’ arrangements of plants and vegetables. The two layers function as a filter to eliminate the adverse aspects of the environment and bring nature to where necessary inside.

The outer wall is tilted inward at different diagonals to create better views of the landscape. This, at the same time, helps users in various corners inside the house feel the slow of time and weather through shadow and air.

The Brick Cave encompasses a chain of spaces interconnected with one another with random apertures gradually shifting from openness to privacy and vice versa. The combination of “close” and “open” creates diverse relations with the surroundings.

The building reminds peoples of both strangeness and familiarity by offering them images of corners of a yard, expanses of the sky, strips of garden, and parts of an alley. H&P Architects was established in June 2009 by Doan Thanh Ha and Tran Ngoc Phuong.

The firm designs offices, residential property, hotels, resorts and hospitals, as well as urban, industrial, educational and infrastructure projects.

The company has won various prizes at the Architizer A Awards 2017, ARCASIA Awards for Architecture 2017 and American Architecture Prize Awards 2017.

VNS/VNA