Siamese Towers, Hô-Chi-Minh, Vietnam

In Vietnamese the word ​‘nha­vuon’, means a tra­di­tio­nal house or lite­rally means ​‘house with gar­den’. It is dif­fi­cult to ima­gine that these two arches of claus­tra of concrete and glass were concei­ved in order for more than 400 people to live there accor­ding to ances­tral tra­di­tions. Difficult to ima­gine too that under this appa­rent coherent and monu­men­tal aes­the­tic, each one is iden­ti­fiable from the ground by a play of colors and ran­dom strata that makes each of the facades unique.. Difficult to ima­gine, howe­ver, being equip­ped with all sophis­ti­ca­tion in terms of air condi­tio­ning, the towers can func­tion sim­ply by natu­ral ven­ti­la­tion, as in the past, crea­ting drafts that allow you to refresh your­self and live inside and out­side. Difficult to ima­gine that each house has two or three orien­ta­tions, no oppo­site and that to go home, one crosses a ​“front gar­den” with pano­ra­mic views. And all this by using only the 20% of the floor space that was allo­ca­ted to the pro­ject and without anyone having to live under the sha­dow of others. It is pos­sible to set­tle in height at the gates of Ho Chi Minh City very dif­fe­rently from what we are often led to believe …