Inrestudio uses double-layered envelope to create "in-between spaces" for Vietnamese home
Irregularly placed and mismatched openings puncture the terracotta-toned, double-layered exterior of 100 Windows, a multigenerational home in Vietnam designed by local architecture practice Inrestudio.
Designed for two generations and three households – a couple, their two sons and the sons' families – the 639-square-metre home is located close to the Red River in the suburbs of Hanoi.
Responding to both the region's tropical climate and the likelihood of extensive development in the future, Inrestudio wrapped the home with a double-layered exterior to create pockets of private outdoor space and help filter air through its interiors.
"The project is shaped around ambiguity," studio founder Niko told Dezeen. "The suburb itself is ambiguous, neither city nor countryside, and so is its future; even 'family' is an ambiguous unit here, three households whose composition will keep changing,"
"As a vessel for this indeterminate program, an abstract house form retains a minimal symbol of 'house', while the many openings set the building apart from its neighbours," he added.
While the home features multiple windows, its name 100 Windows was intended "as a symbolic expression of abundance, rather than a literal count of one hundred windows," Niko said.
The home is elevated atop a slightly setback base of dark, textured concrete. A floor paved in basalt unites an external patio with a swimming pool and the ground floor living, dining and kitchen areas.
Above, two storeys of bedrooms and a top floor with a second living, dining and kitchen area have been designed to adapt to a variety of family arrangements, with the whole being encased within the home's distinctive double-skin facade.
Numerous openings puncture both layers of this facade. Many of these openings align to give the home's windows unobstructed views, while some have been offset to provide shade and privacy to recessed balconies and thin terraces.
Inrestudio also used the additional thickness of this double-layered exterior to create shelving, desks, storage and ventilation channels that help to cool the interiors, which have been finished with dark timber floors and exposed concrete ceilings.
"The plan is kept as generic as possible so it can accept many futures, and the 'loose double skin' sustains a relationship with the surroundings that can stay open and diverse over a long time," Niko said.
"Life does not complete itself at the centre of the house but seeps out toward its edges. These in-between places have no proper names, but they are where people gather and time is well spent," he continued.
"This richness of the periphery is something an urban house cannot afford; in the countryside it is not needed, because a generous exterior is already there. Securing richness at the edge of the building itself is, to us, a very suburban act."
The rooftop living area of 100 Windows opens out onto a large terrace, which sits beneath an open grid of terracotta-toned concrete beams that is angled to continue the slope of the home's roof.
Other homes in Vietnam recently featured on Dezeen include an extension by ODDO Architects informed by Hanoi's narrow alleyways, and a home in Da Nang by Live Out Studio that is fronted by a perforated brick wall.
The photography is by Trieu Chien.
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