Tree house

Located in Nha Trang, a city in central Vietnam surrounded by the ocean and mountains, the client wanted a large house with a large garden. In response to this request, a Vo Trong Nghia Architects + ICADA designed the roof as a garden planting numerous trees on it. The local building code required almost 50% of the roof area to be covered by gray or orange-color tiles and sloped. To obey this rule but maximize the green area atop, the roof is divided into parallel bands in an alternating sequence.

The interior spaces of the house are structured by this system of parallel bands. Under the tiled roof are the living, dining and bed rooms, while service spaces, such as bathrooms, and circulation spaces, are located under the greened roof, where the ceiling height is limited because of the deep soil layers for trees atop.

The house is one of the latest variations of the serial house project called ‘house for trees’. The large single roof is departing from the scale of private house. It is more like an infrastructure or a pocket park open to the neighbors. Gently sloped, this roof-landscape is visually connected to the surrounded mountains. In the shadow of trees, the residents can enjoy the views and spend their life with full of greenery.