Ha Long Villa: Home in Vietnam Wrapped in an Inhabitable Garden | Designs & Ideas on Dornob - Feed https://dornob.com Architecture, Interior and Furniture Design Thu, 07 Aug 2025 23:57:26 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.6.1 Ha Long Villa: Home in Vietnam Wrapped in an Inhabitable Garden https://dornob.com/ha-long-villa-home-in-vietnam-wrapped-in-an-inhabitable-garden/ Mon, 08 Jun 2020 14:00:00 +0000 https://dornob.com/?p=77236 In hot climates, the unrelenting sun beats straight down onto building facades, making it a lot harder for them to keep their interiors cool. Shades of various kinds can help, of course, but there’s a different way of dealing with heat that comes with additional benefits. A new home in Vietnam by VTN

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]]> In hot climates, the unrelenting sun beats straight down onto building facades, making it a lot harder for them to keep their interiors cool. Shades of various kinds can help, of course, but there’s a different way of dealing with heat that comes with additional benefits. A new home in Vietnam by VTN Architects features a second facade set about eight feet from its actual exterior walls, creating a cool, shady breezeway in between that supports an abundance of trees and other plants.

Greenery spills out of every opening in the pristine Ha Long Villa's exterior facade.

“Ha Long Villa” is remarkable at first glance not just for its irregular geometric facade, but also for the trees poking out of large apertures on every side, all the way up to the roof. Along with providing a little extra shade, the trees give the home a garden-like atmosphere that helps connect its inhabitants to nature within the rapidly industrializing coastal city of Ha Long.

The architects’ two principle motivations may seem to be at odds: the increasing loss of forests and other undeveloped spaces in the area, and the need to create high-quality sustainable housing that meets Ha Long’s rising standard of living. The result is an airy modern home with almost as much exterior living space as interior, though realistically, it’s a bit oversized as a single-family home to truly be considered sustainable.

Close-ups of the Ha Long Villa's exterior facade show just how the openings and trees work in perfect conjunction with one another.

Large walkways run through the space between the villa's two facades, allowing the residents plenty of room for outdoor activities.

Large trees of all shades of green burst out from openings in the villa's exterior facade.

In addition to its one-of-a-kind architecture, the Ha Long Villa also boasts an incredible coastal location.

“The semi-exterior space connects the interior and the terrace part of the garden, and is a place to promote various living activities,” the firm explains. “It is a multipurpose space which serves as a connection between each space. It is a place for gardening, sightseeing, sitting, [and] walking, and it also connects to the living space. These distinctive spaces offer residents options in their daily lives, like whether to dine inside or outside on a particular day. The various movements in the resident’s lives are also conveyed to the neighborhood through [the] windows in the exterior facade.”

Between the wrap-around terraces and all the plants on the rooftop, the architects have planted more greenery than construction of the home displaced, though of course, public green spaces have a lot more value to the community at large. VTN Architects took inspiration from stones found in the nearby UNESCO World Heritage Site Ha Long Bay for the rough exposed concrete of the exterior walls, which themselves are dappled in shadow by all the greenery. As the trees change along with the seasons, so does the facade.

Stained wood and sleek furniture pieces inside the villa make its large windows all the more inviting.

Stained wood and sleek furniture pieces help make up the Ha Long Villa's common areas.

The bedrooms inside the villa feel warm, airy and of course, abundantly green.

The dining area inside the villa as surprisingly open, with added charm coming from elegant hanging lighting fixtures overhead.

“Ha Long Villa is one of the prototypes of ‘House for Trees,’ which is a series of residential projects,” add the architects. “The aim of the series is to bring green spaces back into the city, and to design as much greenery as was present in the original landscape to provide a healthier life to people living in the city. Due to the simplicity of the concept, the idea of ‘House for Trees’ can be multiplied almost anywhere in tropical climate regions. As part of the vast landscape, Ha Long Villa harmonizes with the natural environment. And Ha Long Villa aims to be a space where people return to living surrounded by nature.”

The trees and plants surrounding the Ha Long Villa seem to glow in the evening.

It would be cool to see the passive cooling double-facade concept catch on in other hot places, particularly deserts. Can’t you imagine something like this working in a place like Nevada or Arizona with cacti instead of trees?

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