Architecture Wednesday: Vegan House of Shutters

This is a new house, created from an old apartment terrace. The owner works in travel and tourism, after renting the house he bought it and renovated it into the Vegan Shutter House; the shutter name is obvious, but he created the house as a cultural place for people to meet up, share and cook Vietnamese traditional food, especially vegan foods.

Vegan House of  Shutters. Makes sense.

The owner hoarded all the abandoned old things in the house; furniture, tables, chairs, wardrobes, windows, lampshades … and shutters. And, working on a limited budget, the architect used all of these abandoned items, along with new things, to create a fresher place which still keeps traditional values of the former house. The old window shutters were used as the main material to create a distinctive appearance, rearranged into a new facade with different colors and wrapped up onto the roof. Some open windows on the roof provide the trees beneath with space and natural light. This symbolizes growth, hopes for the future and goodness from traditional bedrock. These shutter windows also turn up inside the house as light partitions, to separate and decorate the space.

On the ground floor is the kitchen, with curved cabinetry that goes through the main floor. The big kitchen at the front is where people cook, talk and enjoy their cooking together in an adjacent dining room. A garden and an old staircase to the first floor are among these spaces.

The first floor contains a bedroom at the front and a place to relax or work. A new steel staircase was built beside the atrium to the second floor, which used to be an unused roof; now it houses another bedroom made of old available steel sheeting, which lies beneath the shuttered roof system. From this room to the front, there is a garden for drinking tea and looking at night sky through the windows.

The architect hoped to create a new place for visitors from many different cultures, and showed how rearranging things in a new way, the old things and the new ones can exist together and support each other.

It's recycling and upcycling and all kinds of fabulous.

As always, click to emBIGGERate.

ArchDaily

Of Memorials and Springtime Concerts

It was a beautiful weekend here in Smallville, and the perfect time to do some Smallville things …like visit The Wall That Heals …

Back on Veterans Day 1996, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund unveiled a half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., that was designed to travel to communities throughout the country; since then, The Wall That Heals has been displayed at nearly 600 communities throughout the nation, spreading the Memorial's healing legacy to millions.

And this past week, it was in Camden, it’s only stop in South Carolina.

Broad Street, lined with flags

Arriving in Camden

Arriving at the Revolutionary War Park.

My father was in Vietnam, and thankfully was one of the few that not only came home but came home unscathed by that war and yet the Vietnam meorial has always held a special place in my heart for some reason ...

I remember as kids, my sister and I found out about POW Bracelets. A POW bracelet, or POW/MIA bracelet, was a nickel-plated or copper commemorative bracelet engraved with the rank, name, and loss date of an American serviceman captured or missing during the Vietnam War. They cost $3.00 back then.

When you got your bracelet, you promised to wear it until the soldier named on the bracelet, or their remains, were returned to America.

I think I got mine in 1970, as a wee queerling, and I wore it for a couple of years, then I took it off and kind of forgot about it. But I never forgot the name of the soldier on my bracelet … Stephen Paul Hansen. I wrote to his family when I got my bracelet and they told me about their father and husband and their hopes that he would come home. Sadly, Major Hansen never returned home, something I learned years later when I visited the Vietnam War Memorial at the State Capital in Sacramento and saw his name there.

The times I had visited The Wall in DC I never looked for his name, but this past weekend I did, and I found it. He died in captivity a few years before I ever got that bracelet; he was just twenty-seven, with a wife and family back home in California.

I didn’t know him, never met him, but I still felt that sense of loss from just having his name on my wrist for a couple of years. And I never knew what he looked like until visiting the Wall of Faces online.

Major Stephen P. Hansen 1/4/1940 - 6/3/1967

And I learned there that I could ask for a rubbing of his name from the DC Memorial and it would be done and sent to me, free of charge. I did that, too, just to feel some sense of …something from those terrible years.

I’m so happy my Dad came home safe, and sound, but I’m saddened by the others, whose names I don’t know, and the one whose name I have never forgotten, who didn’t see their families again.

Sunday was another gorgeous day, and Carlos and the Camden Community Band had their Spring Concert in Rectory Square and so I spent a lovely afternoon, in the sun and a cool breeze, listening to the band, and members of the Fort Jackson 282nd Army Band.

The concert band ... I'm there, in the back ...see me?

Ah, life in a small town … sometimes it’s near perfection.

Architecture Wednesday: House For Trees

from Vo Trong Nghia Architects:

“Under rapid urbanization, cities in Vietnam have diverged far away from their origins as rampant tropical forests. In Ho Chi Minh City, for example, only 0.25% of the entire city is covered by greenery. Over-abundance of motorbikes causes daily traffic congestion as well as serious air pollution. As a result, new generations in urban areas are losing their connections with nature.

'House for Trees.' a prototypical house within a tight budget of 155,000 USD, is an effort to change this situation. The aim of the project is to return green space into the city, accommodating high-density dwelling with big tropical trees. Five concrete boxes, each houses a different program, are designed as “pots” to plant trees on their tops. With thick soil layers, these “pots” also function as storm-water basins for detention and retention of water, therefore contributing to reduce the risk of flooding in the city when the idea is multiplied to a large number of houses in the future.”

Architecture Wednesday: The Stone House

This one makes me want to sit in the gardens all day, before "winding" my way inside.
Winding.My.Way. Get it?
This torus-shaped stone house is located in a quiet residential quarter on the way to Ha Long Bay from Hanoi. A rising green roof and walls composed of subdued color stones in dark blue create a landscape, which stands out quite nicely in the neighborhood.
All the rooms surround an oval courtyard, creating a colony-like relationship with each other. Circulating flow runs around the courtyard and continues to the green roof, connecting all rooms in the house. This courtyard and green roof compose a sequential garden, which creates a rich relationship between inside and outside of the house. 
To create a wall with smooth curvature, cubic stones, four inches thick, are carefully stacked. Consequently, the wall performs the play of light and shadow. Massive and meticulous texture of the wall generates a cave-like space, which recalls the image of a primitive house.
To me it's perfectly peaceful. Perfectly natural.

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