House 304 - The Well

304 House is nested within a typical residential block in the urban setting of Ho Chi Minh City, noisy, densely populated with townhouses, without a hint of green space in sight. Only 3.5m x 17m in size, single façade facing an open street, the house is a home for a young working family. The architecture represents itself as an in between buffer zone, that is for nature and the resident to live in harmony, to free the mind from the hectic reality in a developing society, where fear and worries always creep around the corner. In the place where in between architecture resides, it embraces the one to one relationship between resident and nature through vertical expansion of the well, metaphorically understood as the light well, the vegetal well, the ventilation well, and above all, the well where nature dwells. The architectural monologue begins on the ground floor, where the traditional Vietnamese space symbolizes itself in space through the dappling light, the flickering shadow of the tree, minimal furniture adding spices to the life that happen around it. Continuing the monologue, the balcony softly wraps around the vegetation as the opening gradually expand toward the sky, forming an oval-like well, allowing light and air to fill the space. The well breaths in a peaceful atmosphere across the house, flowing into the bedroom. Here, there are no rigid boundaries, exposing the space toward nature while maintaining the ability to create privacy and safety when necessary. A layer of white mesh interwoven with vegetation encasing the receding floor plate as the house expand vertically to form garden spaces on each level, protecting the living space from direct sunlight from the West and soften the cubical rigidity of the typical townhouse. The oval skylight on the roof let in light illuminating spaces below and ventilating the house.