Pinwhell House / CEEarch – 【Architectural CAD Drawings】

Architects: CEEarch
Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Architect In Charge: Ho Hung Cuong
Area: 111.8 m2
Project Year: 2016
Photographs: VietLu

Text description provided by the architects. The project is located on a narrow land area in the center of HCM city, a sleepless city with highly crowded density of houses and vehicles in a very busy lifestyle environment.

The land area with length of 4.3m and width of 26m is considered as a typical land area in this region where focusing on ultimately developing houses’ length and height. This forms a trend of “Tube Houses”, in the city center, types of narrow, long and high houses without doors on two sides. Meanwhile the first floors of these houses are used for business or offices, upstairs are used for living.

This house is not an exception. The first three floors from the ground are used for offices and the three upstairs are used by a family of four- the parents and their two children. The top floors of the house are the worship place and terrace.

Coincidently, both homeowner, a female dramatist and the architect have the same designing ideas of how to make this house different, simple but inspiring, open but private, and especially well-aired as well as how to take advantages of natural light sources.

One of the solutions is distributing voids along the length of the house in order to ensure the house’s space to be well-aired and full of sunlight to save energy. The vertical design for these narrow and high housing types is also a challenge. Childhood memories with air paper pinwheels bring architects ideas of building ventilation block spinning as pinwheels to make the house livelier. These ventilation block are specially designed by architect and are made at the site by enthusiastic contractors.

These lively ventilation block are very useful in regulating and protecting the house from direct sunlight in the summer and are suitable for the tropical sub-equatorial weather.

Sunlight shining through these bricks create sunny and lively patterns running around the house, which associates with standing under a giant tree to contemplate slight sunshine through leaves and running here and there.

What makes us proud is not only meeting the homeowner’s demands but also get over old and habitual trials in design and building houses in the city center. These habits include taking advantages of maximum area of the whole house, which makes the house become camped, unbreathable and dark. We are very glad that we are able to contribute another architectural solution for urban houses in HCM city. This improvement can help bring moments of happiness and comfortableness for everyone and their beloved family members in their own houses.