Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam – a bustling, densely populated city characterized by closely spaced houses. Residents often face limited living space and a lack of green areas. Here, houses are typically built on relatively small plots and tend to develop vertically.
EcoBreeze House is a unique residential project with an area of 330 m2 – a rare size within the city. This advantage allowed the design team to explore our ideas fully. The project creates a modern structure to maximize open space and connect with the surrounding nature, bringing it closer to the owner family.
The distinctive feature of Eco Breeze House lies in its Double-Skin Facade system, which enables the building to “breathe”. This climate-responsive solution includes an outer layer of thermally treated local wood (sustainably sourced) combined with an inner sliding glass system. The entire system is anchored to a robust prefabricated steel frame. As a result, the house demonstrates its self-ventilating properties, addressing the challenge of a 22 meter vertical facade while ensuring overall ventilation.
Integrating greenery inside the house is an essential design principle. On the ground floor, auxiliary spaces are pushed to one side, creating a native plant garden that covers over 45% of the land area and surrounds the main living space. This allows owners to interact with the natural environment right within their modern home, blurring the boundary between humans and nature.
In Asian culture, the kitchen is considered the “heart” of every family. Therefore, the A+ design team placed the kitchen at the center of the main functional block on the ground floor. According to the feng shui principle, the kitchen is set at a 45 degree angle to the house, combined with natural light from the double-height voids and skylights above, creating a perfect vertical garden. This space emulates a miniature natural environment, allowing large-canopied native trees to thrive sustainably. The result is a light-filled, green oasis from every angle.
Connecting with the second floor, a cleverly designed corridor links the bedrooms with the active spaces. Even during rest, family members can wish each other good night from the bedrooms through the double-height void or catch glimpses of a parent cooking in the kitchen below. This fosters warm connections and interactions among family members.
When we think of EcoBreeze House, as designers, we aim to use locally sourced materials and native plants to create a strong connection that harmonizes with Vietnam’s climate through private living spaces. All these elements contribute to a distinctly local project like EcoBreeze House.