Stacking Green

Stacking Green

Status:

02/2011

Program:

Private House

Location:

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

GFA:

215m2

Principal Architect:

Vo Trong Nghia, Daisuke Sanuki, Shunri Nishizawa.

Design team:

Nguyen Minh Tung

Contractor:

Wind and Water house Joint Stock Company

Client:

Individual

Photographers:

Hiroyuki Oki

Numerous developing Asian cities are becoming indistinguishable. They are losing their regional characteristics under the influence of furious urban sprawls and commercialism. The population boom further worsens the quality of life as well as the quality of greenery in those developing cities. Ho Chi Minh City - Vietnam^s largest metropolitan area is not an exception. Built in 2011, the private house "Stacking Green" takes an experimental approach in designing to challenge this situation.

Even in advanced nations, people  have a desire for more trees both in public and private spaces. So locals are already pro-actively decorating their streets with plants and flowers to turn their surroundings into a greenwood. "Stacking Green" is driven by the same desire. Instead of limiting plants to the street level, planters are distributed vertically over the facade.
The private house, designed for a thirty-year-old couple and their mother, is a typical tube house constructed on a four-meter-wide-and-twenty-meter-deep plot. The front and back facades are both composed of layers of concrete planters cantilevered two sidewalls. Not only does the green facade provide visual comfort for the occupants, but it protects its inhabitants direct sunlight, street noise, and pollution. Post-calculation for determining passive cooling in the house has shown wind flowing through the porous facade and two skylights, which helps the inhabitants feel comfortable Because they rarely use air conditioning, the electric charge only costs 25 USD per month on average. The cost of water can be excluded the ancillary expenses because plants are watered automatically with a rainwater collecting system.


"Stacking Green" has achieved several international recognition, among them is a place in the Top 10 of Most Popular Projects by ArchDaily in 2012.