Đèn lồng Lights Up The Night - Danang Waterfront Hotel

Traditional Water Lanterns of Hoi An

The traditional water lanterns of Hoi An, Vietnam, set the premise for this waterfront project in the search for a contextual architectural language.

The architectural programme called for a series of waterfront resort hotels to be set along the enchanting coast of Da Nang, a famed resort and port city in Central Vietnam. Rather than having the hotels to be built hugging the coastlines, the adventurous Client wanted to experiment with a different notion of a waterfront resort, with the complex literally extended into the ocean to obliterate from the coastline constraints and to have unobstructed views towards both the sea and the hinterland. Doing so will also refrain the development from affecting the natural coastline, with the sea pile foundation system posing as little interference to oceanic life as possible.

Night and Day View of Hotel with allusion to the lanterns

Tranquil setting along Danang coast

Programmatic Strategy

Rather than spreading out the resort into an extensive horizontal network of programmes, as in a typical resort layout of detached villas with front administration & back of house etc, instead a consolidated approach is adopted here whereby the programmes are stacked vertically in 10 storeys high thereby restraining their impact in terms of footprint.

Whilst optimising landuse in terms of consolidation, it is also imperative to address the presence of a tower in relation to its tranquil setting. A strategy to achieve this is to induce the appearance of a reduced number of storeys without physically having to do. Floors of similar programmes are relegated to a pair of 2, rendering the tower to appear as 5 instead of 10 storeys high. The tower height is further suppressed via a series of compression and expansion of the stack series, creating a seemingly moving tower that eludes the massiveness of a static form.

Contextual Language

In the search for a contextual architectural language, I began to look at the enchanting and beautifully crafted water lanterns of Hoi An. The lanterns have been hung as symbols to seek good fortune and luck since the merchants of 16th century. What is intriguing is the ability of the lanterns to cast light and yet illuminating a soft glow through the intricate silk envelope.

Drawing inspirations from the lantern designs, diagonally cut fenestrations are placed along the perimeter of three sides of the stacked tower, along with a more intricate and organic patterned wall on the fourth side. Collectively, the façade design allude to the lantern’s ability to present momentary glimpses into the interior without revealing too much of the hotel’s happenings within, very much like what the lantern’s silk envelope does.

Sky Lobby

Twin Towers by the waterfront

Riverfront Township Masterplan in Vietnam

This is a recent completion of a masterplan concept for one of the most prominent developers in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The site is located within the upcoming District 9 at the peripheral boundary of the city and the development will be a township for exclusive living with a gated community of luxurious villas, an internal lake and waterways that reinforce and echo the presence of an adjacent river network.

Slated to be the next dragon of asia alongside with China, Vietnam has been and still is experiencing phenomenal economic growth and coupled with the rapidly expanding city, this has called for the municipality and the developers to rethink the existing housing policies. Rather than intensifying areas within the congested city to accommodate massive influx of dwellers from the hinterland, peripheral sites along the city edge were identified and masterplanned as key growth areas or satellite townships to alleviate the problem of space constraint within the central crowded city. One such area identified within the overall masterplan is this development site which is in close proximity to the scenic Tac River at district 9.

The key idea of this riverfront planning is to leverage on the presence of the main river, the extensive network of weaving waterways and the lush greenery as design generators. And to further enhance the notion of waterfront living, a man-made lake will be nested within the southern end of which clusters of villas are placed to resonate the idea of floating above the water. Environmentally, this lake will also deliver an evaporative cooling effect during the hotter months.

Programmatically, this township will be self-sustaining comprising of villas and low-rise condominiums with a slew of supporting amenities for a total community living. A 3km long riverfront boardwalk serve as a connecting device for the residents to transverse from the northern zone to the commercial zone at the southern tip and vice-versa. Pockets of intimate green courtyards form the interstitial space between rows of villas.

For a sustainable development, it is envisaged that materials indigenous to the local context such as bamboo be integrated into the overall construction process as much as possible, such as for their use as external window screens and furniture within the villas.