Blog : plants

Urban Farming Office: VTN Architects’ Office Gives Back Lush Greenery

Urban Farming Office: VTN Architects’ Office Gives Back Lush Greenery

/ Ho Chi Minh City /

/ Story: Phattaraphon / Photograph: Hiroyuki Oki /

The design studio of VTN Architects (Vo Trong Nghia Architects) sits comfortably ensconced in a plant-covered six-story building in Ho Chi Minh City. The 1,300-square-meter office block is adorned with balconies containing lush green gardens that combine to create a vibrant building shell. It’s a design based on an understanding of the challenges facing big cities and the importance of environmental conservation.

VTN Architects

Far and wide a lack of recreation areas and green spaces, coupled with rapidly worsening air pollution, is causing serious health problems for people in urban areas. It’s for this reason that living trees and shrubs are integrated into the ‘ building’s external envelope.

The result is a green office block that brings fresh air to the design. Here, easy-care trees cool the air, provide shade, and filter out dangerous, fine particulate matter. It transforms ideas into solutions as Vietnam, a developing country, joins a global network of advanced manufacturing hubs.

Precisely, it’s a design rooted in good environmental management practice that aims to minimize human impacts on surrounding ecosystems – a fact that’s easy to overlook when planning a building. Also known as the Urban Farming Office, it communicates a message that failure to do so will have unpredictable and often undesirable consequences.

VTN Architects

VTN Architects

VTN Architects

The Urban Farming Office isn’t just home to a design studio. It’s also a perfect example of innovative companies driven by a desire to go green in the workplace.

Plus, it gives back healthy lush foliage and a breath of fresh air to the city. That’s not all though. It draws attention to many possibilities of vertical gardening – techniques to grow more in less space.

From the outside looking in, the building façade looks like a botanical laboratory lined with decorative concrete containers where trees and plants grow. They are mostly easy-to-care-for native plants that thrive in local ecosystems. Where appropriate, seasonal vegetables, herbs and spices are grown organically to meet family needs. It’s a way to live a more sustainable lifestyle.

And it’s safe, eco-friendly, and even energy efficient.

VTN Architects

VTN Architects

VTN Architects

From a distance, thriving vegetation turns the bland building shell into a lushly planted living façade. Overall it’s a straightforward concrete construction with outdoor platforms attached to the side of the building.

These balconies are filled with modular concrete planters designed to be moved easily depending on the height and growth of trees. This ensures that each particular species gets sufficient amounts of sun to grow.

Combine biodiversity in the balcony and rooftop gardening with the surrounding landscape, and you get an expansive urban forest that amounts to 190 percent of the total project area. As the architect puts it, this translates into 1.1 tons of vegetation including native edible plants, vegetables, herbs and fruit trees carefully chosen as being the best and most suitable.

Also, it’s organic farming and the quality of being diverse that give the office building a cheerful and positive personality.

VTN Architects

VTN Architects

VTN Architects

Walk past the front façade, and you come before an inviting first impression. The window, doorframe and exterior wall are glazed entirely with glass to protect interior rooms from the elements.

On the outside, lush green vegetation doubles as a building envelope that filters out harsh sunlight while allowing plenty of fresh, outdoor air to pass into the interior workspaces. Plant watering is done using rainwater stored in catch basins strategically placed around the building.

The irrigation method that sprays water droplets overhead with sprinklers also keeps the ambient temperature cool, thereby saving money on air conditioning costs.

On every level, the open floor plan boasts clean lines that make the interior workspace look more spacious and well-ventilated all day long. All told, it’s the ingenious double wall design that makes living a whole lot easier and less stressful.

VTN Architects

VTN Architects

To give a brief summary, green architecture isn’t the only feature that makes this office building stand out from the rest. Rather, it’s also the image of organizational culture that speaks volumes for the determination of the architects who live and work here.

VTN Architects have demonstrated that humans and the environment can coexist symbiotically. This is achievable by letting nature permeate and be a crucial part of the city and any office design. It’s the way forward in creating a more equitable, sustainable future.

VTN Architects


Owner/Architect: VTN Architects (Vo Trong Nghia Architects)


 

10 Great Plants for Tropical Rainforest Landscaping

10 Great Plants for Tropical Rainforest Landscaping

How do you do tropical rainforest landscaping? Use high-tolerant plants that grow well in heat and humidity. Living ASEAN has put together the following list of 10 tropical species that are generally easy to find in all ASEAN countries:

/// ASEAN ///
  Photography: Rithirong Chanthongsuk, Sitthisak Namkham

Bromeliads (Urn Plant): these are ornamental plants with beautiful flowers, slow-growing, easy to care for, and drought-resistant. They do well both where there is a lot and a moderate amount of sunlight. If one gets a lot of sun, the leaves become more and more colorful. Bromeliads give off oxygen during the night and absorb carbon dioxide, making them especially suitable for bedroom placement.

 

Spikemoss fern (Selaginella Involvens): a ground cover, this is also known as “medical spikemoss” or “peacock fern.” It’s fan-like, with rounded, flat, bushy leaves, and often found in dense forest around steep mountain slopes or near rocks that get moderate sun.

 

Left: Begonia: represented by many species, it thrives in humid forests, and is thought of as a forest flower. There are both edible and are inedible varieties., For an an alternate sour taste, edible varieties can be used instead of lime in tom yam soup. The inedible varieties have velvety leaves.

Right: Fan palm (Palas Payung): the standout feature of the fan palm is its wide, spreading leaves, resembling folding fans. It can reach four meters in height. Leaves end in sharp, thorny points.

 

Left: Staghorn Fern (Climbing bird’s nest fern): this fern has climbing roots and thick, green leaves covered with fuzzy hair. The leaf ends fork, resembling a stag’s antlers. For their beautiful and unusual shapes, and their moisturizing quality, they’re often used as ornamental plants.

Right: Coriander-Leaf Fern (Sphenmeris Chusang): this ground fern, found along the face of earthen cliffs or in foothills, does well in shade or indirect sunlight. The petioles about 30cm long, and leaves are delicate and reminiscent of coriander.

 

Left: the Bead Tree (Elaeocarpus Grandiflorus) has a forest habitat. With gray-brown bark and thick, green, oval-shaped leaves, it produces white flowers with a light fragrance. It’s often found growing on the sides of waterfalls.

Right: Australian tree fern (Dicksonia Antarctica): easy to grow, this rapidly growing fern with a chubby trunk grows in places that are humid, but not too wet. Its leaves grow out bushy and beautiful, but it produces neither flower nor fruit.

 

Left: The round-leaved banyan (Ficus Annulata Blume) stands out amid a bed of spikemoss. Leaves are round and small, dark green, with smooth edges. It produces a round berry-like fruit, yellow-orange when ripe. It’s considered a good-luck tree, associated with wealth. It grows best in dim to medium sunlight.

Right: Simpoh ayer (Dillenia Suffruticosa): this medium-sized shrub flowers white and is often used in house decoration. In its native to Malaysia, ayer thought to bring good luck. At full size it’s about 8-10 meters tall.

 


 

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A Marvelous Beach House on A Land of Ko Pha-Ngan

A Marvelous Beach House on A Land of Ko Pha-Ngan

/ Surat Thani, Thailand /
/ Story: Wuthikorn Suthiapa / Photographs: Sitthisak Namkham /

Many have dreamt of owning a beach house on a beautiful island. The owners of this property have made their dream come true with style and grace.

beach house

beach house

The pier at Ko Pha-Ngan (Pha-Ngan Island) is always bustling with activity as tourists keep coming in droves, looking forward to the party. But the island on the Gulf of Thailand is also known for its fine collection of tranquil beaches, especially the one on Hin Kong Bay, where this charming beach house is located.

The casually cool house sits embraced by a circle of trees that gives it a tropical touch and camouflages it from the busy streets. The wide open design ensures every part of the stilt house is easily accessible wherever you may be, from the room at the rear to the front porch to the infinity pool that connects to the ocean beyond.

The house with a twist features a tree trunk that continues to grow through the floorboard. A clever design element, the tree had been there long before the owners decided to put it in a home.

Not wanting to cut it down, they built their home around the tree and let it keep on growing. They are just happy to live and let live despite having to adjust the floorboard and roofing from time to time.

Beach House

Beach House

Beach House

Almost all the furniture in the house is made of wood, a personal preference that fits in well with the kind of home they live in. The interior living space is bedecked with ornaments and souvenirs from a lifetime of journeys as well as stunning found objects that were washed ashore.

Both the first and second floors feature long corridors that provide easy access to every part of the house. The owners have wanted their beach house to be a seaside resort designed for relaxation and good times with family and friends.

“While I am here, every day is a holiday,” said the owner with a smile.

“I love to just lie down in the living room and gaze out into the sea. Every now and then, friends come over for a visit, and we throw a barbeque party. My husband usually spends his time in the garden taking care of plants and things.”

One last word. If you haven’t thought of owning a beach house before, this picturesque house on a paradise island will make you want to have one.

Beach House

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