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And Now for Something Completely Different from Vo Trong Nghia Architects

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After a slick white square house with a breathable green wall, and a bamboo and steel girders house for slum dwellers...

…here is a completely different house from the young Vietnamese studio, Vo Trong Nghia Architects.

Not only is this circular stone house a departure for Vo Trong Nghia Architects. It is a departure for all modern architects.

No architects design stone buildings now, let alone a circular one with a green roof.

Let alone a concave circular house – made up of stone bricks.

The whole house appears to be dug into a hillside, so the concave stone facade is an internal space making a courtyard.

But surprise! That “hillside” is on one side only.

In fact the exterior of the house is actually convex.

The concave courtyard set in the hill is on the other side of this convex side of the circular house.

The few interiors shown are astonishing – like architectural interiors from another century.

This is the most polished, sophisticated treatment of a circular interior I’ve ever seen.

All the architectural woodworking is of another era, lush, heavy, beautifully worked, rather than the slick and mass produced techniques used today.

The woods used are dark tropical hardwoods. A diffused fluorescent light under the green roof is dappled by wooden poles, signifying the traditional bamboo roof of peasant houses, but this is far from that.

The utterly unique and sophisticated house was built near Ha Long Bay in Hanoi and is for a young family with two children.

Some architects we cover keep working on one general concept with a recognisable look through multiple houses – like Studio Mumbai, Ong & Ong or Guz. (The search box top left will bring them up, if you want to see examples.) You’d know their work anywhere.

Others we’ve covered (like VisionDivision, and BIG) consistently do work that’s interesting, but that’s the only quality each work has in common. Vo Trong Nghia Architects is definitely in the latter group.