Son La Restaurant

Located in the North of Vietnam, Son La Province is an ethnic cultural area with abundant nature of wild forests and mountains. Even with its strong cultural and natural heritage, there was too little development for the place as a tourist destination. To explore the potential of the area, Son La Restaurant was built along with its new hotel complex.
Being on a high level with limited accessibility makes the transportation of building materials extremely difficult. Accordingly, the solution was to maximize the advantage of local resources such as bamboo and stone. 
To deal with harsh climate conditions in the area, the restaurant is separated into two main sections. The indoor section was composed of 8 separated buildings cladded in stone to provide individual air conditioning in hot seasons. The semi-outdoor section consists of a dining hall with a bamboo structure to shelter occupants heavy rainfalls. 
The stone-cladded volumes open up the space, creating multiple entrances to the dining hall and framing the views to the outside. On the other hand, the roof structure for the dining hall was made out of a local bamboo type called “Luong” that could grow up to eight meter in height. 96 bamboo columns, each composed of four individual bamboos, induce the vertical expression of a wild forest. 

Shear loads of the roof were braced by the ten layer of crossed bamboo beams, which equally spread them on the stone buildings. Covered with a layer of transparent sheeting on top, the ceiling was made by a local “vot” thatch. Skylights between the columns fill the space with soft sun ray.
With only a modest quote of 600$ per square meter, the restaurant is the first phase of further extensions.