A21 STUDIO

“ARCHITECTURE IS A THING THAT IS VERY, VERY BASIC. EVERYONE CAN ENJOY AND EVERYONE CAN BUILD,” DESCRIBED HO CHI MINH CITY-BASED TOAN NGHIEM OF A21 STUDIO FOR WHOM THE ULTIMATE GOAL OF THE DISCIPLINE IS TO ACHIEVE NOT ANY SORT OF FORM, BUT FREEDOM. 

Let’s begin with this house, the a21 house.

Well, this is our office that we designed. The construction was done in 2011. So that was already 5 years ago. Because the land was a triangle shape, we got a very good price for the house. We decided to do our studio here so that we wouldn’t have to spend a lot of time traveling from home to the office, which wastes a lot of time. Architects spend most of their time in the office, so we wanted to make our office to be as comfortable as a home. That is why we made a studio like this.

We usually have about 7 to 8 people working here, so if we just kept doing the slot for each person over the house we wouldn’t have a lot of ventilation. But if we allowed for the big void like a courtyard, we wouldn’t have enough space for working. So we decided to make the louver like this one so that the floor works not only as a working area but also allows for the ventilation of the whole house.

And the rain?

a21: Yes, later it is going to rain and you will see how we deal with the nature.

Great, let’s talk about the Saigon House then. Could you share with us more about the background of the project?

a21: Yes. First we would like to show you this house. It is the house of Mr Vuong Hong Sen, called Van Duong Phu, a masterpiece of architecture from Southern Vietnam. Mr. Sen was a historian and had a very big collection of ancient things. He hoped that the house would have been a museum after he died, since it was, so that when everyone came to Saigon they could see the true old history of Saigon.

But when he died, his son didn’t want to give the house to the government and the antiques were stolen. A lot of people have tried to earn more money from that house and now it has totally changed.

From this, we thought that Mr. Sen, the master, had a lot of love for Saigon but he couldn’t transfer his love to his son, so when the son grew up he didn’t love his home. We thought that was the reason why he did what he did.

Also, in Vietnam now, when a kid grows up, they try to split from their family or if they are still living with their parents they try to change everything and build a western looking house. I found that the thing that we lost is about the love, not about the architecture. Because if you have love you will try to control and you will try to maintain and develop that.

When we were doing the Saigon House for the Saigon family they had a lot of kids. The client came to us and said, ‘we have a site of 3*15 meters but we don’t know what to do with that. We want to build a house where all the family can live.

How many people were in the family?

4 adults with 2 grandparents and 5 kids!  We wanted to build a house that the kids could love so that when they grew up they could keep that or they could bring the feeling to their new homes.

Normally, in a current typical house, the kids live in different rooms which are big enough that they don’t really want to go to another place. In this house the rooms are small enough and the common area is very big, so the kids want to go out and see a lot of things.

From the grandparents room you can see all of the house, because the house comprises a lot of small spaces, so it is very easy for them to see. The kids also see their grandparents in their own ways. There is a connection between the generations. That is what we want to do.

Also, all the material for this project came from the destructed houses in Saigon. There are a lot of old houses in Saigon that have collapsed. We buy and bring the old material to be used here. It is not about the cheap price but also about things that have stories. When the kids grow up they will ask [about the material] and you will have a story to tell.

What is it about the character of the space in this house that you think is ‘Super Saigon’?

When we were doing this project all that we wanted to do was to make it to become an alley. People see the different blocks with the different colors just like in the very normal alleys. Also, from the front, it is a typical Saigon house. You see that it is quite familiar to the others and it is very hard for you to recognize that it is a new house.

One of the typical characteristic things about the Saigon house is that you see a lot of roofs like this and we thought how amazing it would be if you were inside and could see the roofs of all the rooms, which now becomes the other houses. Also, I wanted to bring this feeling back, the feeling of people sitting in the alley.

In the Saigon House, the parents are sitting in the courtyard at the center of the house and the kids are running around so people can be very interactive, like being outside, that is what we wanted to bring into the Saigon House.

We have seen a lot of playful drawings made by your office. What tools become important in communication during your design process? What is the role of the drawing?

About the process of our design, I would say that we don’t start from the drawings and we don’t start from the model. None of that. We are starting from our experience in life. We have a lot of ideas in our mind already and when the guys come to us, we talk to them and we find out if they can fit into one of our ideas and then we just show them. So we do not find the idea to fit to the client, we find the client that fits to our idea.

People usually say that the clients have a lot of rights and the architect is like a worker for the clients, but we think that both are equal. Usually when we have an idea, we keep it in our drawing books where we have a lot of drawings.

So you have a kind of ‘book of ideas’ that you have already visualized and then when the clients come you kind of select from that?

No, we select in our mind first. Then comes visualizing and drawing and models.

I’m the one who makes it clearer in order to show the client. Then, when we talk with the client the second time, we do the models because it is easier. For example, it is very hard for the kid to see the drawings. They cannot understand the shapes and the planes.

How about when the project is getting bigger? For example GEM. Does the design process differ from the houses?

No, it is the same. The client was a wedding center and they already had another building before. They were building Gem because they wanted to go toward a higher level so they asked us to do a new wedding center. Actually, this was the easiest building that we have designed.

What do you mean by ‘the easiest’?

For this building, you have to please a lot of customers so everything becomes like a regulation. We wanted to do something that was strange but because this project had to follow a lot of people, things became very easy for us. With the house it is more important because the house is very specific to the user. For this project, they just wanted something beautiful and luxurious that no one had ever seen before.

Talking about luxury, how would you define “Luxury”?

People have to be confident and comfortable in that space. That is how I define luxury. For example, even though you are wearing a very beautiful or very expensive suit, if you are not confident people don’t see that as luxury, people will easily see that you are not confident and not comfortable. Luxury is not about the money. It is about your attitude. In the Saigon House for example, we use the old materials but I think that it is much more luxurious than others. It is about giving them the confidence and the comfort. When the client is a businessman, I build things that are fitting to his attitude, his feeling.

For the house, we built it for the Saigonese to live in and to feel very comfortable in there. Then, when they are buying something new they will do it very carefully because they love the place already. And when they think carefully it means that they will feel very comfortable with that. Then, the house becomes even more comfortable. It is about the feeling from the inside.

People always change their attitudes in order to fit into other people’s points of view. But if you are confident, you keep that and you show it, you even inspire the other people.

 

You mentioned a lot about ‘freedom,’ could you tell us more about your ‘freedom’ in terms of architectural design?

The freedom is the thing that we want to achieve. We always think about the freedom, even in our own lifestyle. When you have freedom, you don’t rely on anything, not even the money or the needs, or the client’s needs as well. You don’t rely on the requirements.

How about the city context?

The city context as well. For example, the N11 house was built 9 years ago. At that time we did it in the minimalist style. We constructed it with a lot of rules. Then it kept developing within those rules. So why do we have to tie ourselves into something like that?

Also, because we’re living in HCMC, in a very hot city and many people when they come to us, they ask us to design a house with a closed room where they can open the air conditioner whenever they want. By then they already tied themselves into using the air conditioner. If there were no air conditioner, their house would be very hot because it was designed for air conditioning.

**rain gets harder**

Now that we’re sitting next to the rain, could you elaborate more about ‘not controlling the nature’?

Usually, when people say that they are controlling the nature it is about using air conditioning. We try to have an option for people which means that you can use air conditioning or not. And when we design we are thinking that they won’t use the air conditioning.

I think we have been occupied by the western way of thinking for a long time in this century so we tend to think like them. For example, we tend to think that living in a glass house is nice, but when you are in a very hot country, with a big glass house, you need to use air conditioning.

So freedom of your mind, firstly, I don’t think like a Westerner – I think like myself so I don’t need a glass house. That is what I mean about the freedom.

About 50 years ago you would see the horror movies talking about wars and killing things, but nowadays, the horror movies are about the environmental things. People recognize that nature is becoming very dangerous and they cannot control it anymore. They have to make it natural. I mean not only me but also the world. You can see this in movies, by books.

And I think that because people are acting unnaturally, that makes them uncomfortable. I mean we spend a lot of money in order to keep the feeling normal. That is funny.  We rely too much on the material, on the technical in order to have the normal feeling.

How about the construction? How do you control the building process during the construction?

That is about the freedom as well. I have to say that we don’t rely on the material availability or the technique of the material. When we design we already predict how they would construct the project. We design the new things based on our understanding of the skills of the craftsmen which means that this new thing is based on their skill. So we already know that they can do that.

So you don’t need to teach or control them, you just show them the drawing and they can do it automatically?

Yeah, because I understand their skills and I know what their limits are. So, I show them a model. Normally, when it is the new thing, I make the model for them to understand. Or at a time when we have a lot of projects and we don’t have enough time to create the paper drawings, we do the modeling and the craftsmen will make the building from the model.

I think that it is also a bad thing, when you design something new that no one can create. I mean that is useless. I think architecture is a thing that is very, very basic. Everyone can enjoy and everyone can build.

 

How about the pagoda, can you tell us more about the project? Because I feel like it has a certain unnaturalness to it, to put the stone on the very light structure?

Yes. But I should tell you about this story first. This is a story about a monk. He was practicing meditation in order to gain enlightenment in his life. He is living poorly because he doesn’t need anything much. Then, there was this mouse and he was not comfortable with that. So, he got a cat from the village in order to revenge the mouse. Then, he had to ask for milk to feed the cat and the villagers said that it would waste a lot of time and they gave him a cow that could give the milk. Then, with the cow, he needed to ask for straw for the cow to eat. Then, the villagers gave him land with equipment so that he could grow the straw in order to support the cow. And from this, he didn’t have time for meditation anymore.

I mean the needs of the people around us, the needs of the things, the needs of money, the needs of the smartphone, these take up a lot of time and we forget the important things in our life.

From that story together with the image of Siddhartha when he is sitting under the Buddha tree, we wanted the pagoda to go back to the original meanings of a pagoda or a place for meditation. For example, this is a pagoda in Vietnam, so do they have to do that in order for meditation? There are a lot of scandals around Buddhism also. And that is not enlightenment. We want to remind people that the pagoda is a place to meditate, to encourage themselves and to remove the material things.

Because this pagoda is built by the fear of removing the material things in your life, if you can remove that, there is nothing to fear. The fear is preventing you from going inside. If you remove your fears, you will be fine. I mean until now it has not collapsed; it is still very strong.

We do something that is in our spirit and in our life and that is reflected in our works. We don’t wait for the client in order to make a building. If we like that, we do that.

 

The last question is about the future, how do you see the changes of the city and its future?

I think there are a lot of good things. I can remember that about ten years ago, when the client wanted to build a restaurant, they didn’t refer to other restaurants for the design.

But now, many people search on the Internet and they already know how to build, especially in terms of the clients. They know what they are doing. And the architects have to adapt and develop their skills in order to adapt to the new ways of thinking.

So, the house is now more designed than before. And people know the value of the architect and the way that the building can affect them.

I think that the new architects in Saigon now are developing because we are not only doing architecture but we are also creating some exhibitions about architecture in Vietnam because we want people to talk more. Before that, people were just arguing about something like I don’t like you or I don’t like your architecture but that is disrespectful.

We make exhibitions so that the architects in Vietnam can come together and talk about themselves and how they think about the future. You would find that there is a bright future in Saigon and in Vietnam because people now, they don’t argue anymore. They cooperate and they want to work more.

 

 

INTERVIEW BY:  B SIDES
a21studio.com