A Kind-of-Scary Staircase Was the Key to Lightening Up This Once-Dark Hanoi Tube House

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Project Details:

Location: Hanoi, Vietnam

Architect: Exutoire / @exutoire_

Footprint: 1,800 square feet

Builder: B-Up Construction

Photographer: Maxime Delvaux / @maxdelv

From the Architect: "22YB1 is a house and studio space in central Hanoi. The project is a full renovation of an early-1990s tube house, a predominant individual housing typology that often poses challenges in terms of comfort and durability due to its dark, stuffy spaces. The main spatial and structural interventions thus consist of relocating the staircase from the middle to the back of the plot and taking away transverse partitions to open up all the floor plans, creating larger rooms that allow for air and light to travel through. To ensure a new kind of thermal comfort and energy efficiency, the facades are also subject to an upgrade: the front is reconditioned in an effort to preserve traces of the old facade while the back side is completely remodeled with glass bricks to bring in natural ambient light. New windows and an open stairwell now help accommodate better cross and stack ventilation.

"The existing concrete column-beam structure with brick infill is reinforced where needed while a galvanized steel structure covered in an insulated corrugated sheet metal envelope is added as a roof extension. The overall choice of finishes remains simple (easy-to-maintain granito and raw concrete surfaces, white-painted walls and ceilings) while touches of colors (bright yellow ceramic, royal blue oil-stained wood, lacquer red steel) come to punctuate the building’s candor. Bas-reliefs on the front facade indicate the building’s address and year of completion as a nod to the local century-old practice of acknowledging the (re)birth of the house through an architectural gesture. In the long tradition of shophouses, the ground floor is used as a workspace (our architecture studio) while the rest of the house is designed for non-nuclear living and hosting family and friends."