MIA design group's modular 'binh thuan house' occupies rural vietnam

Jul 16, 2023

Vietnam-based practice MIA Design Studio completes its Binh Thuan House, a celebration of natural light and ventilation. The design team notes its affinity for ‘ordinary’ architecture during the creation of the house. ‘When we do the ordinary, we do it in a very basically,’ the architects comment, ‘Because the basic is concentrated as much as possible, the house forms the outer covering, as well as the roof, pillars… naturally.’

images © Trieu Chien

The architects at MIA Design Studio shape the Binh Thuan House as a corrugated iron structure supported by a prefabricated steel frame — a simple structure common across the countryside. The team notes the integrated design of the shed: ‘the bearing frame of the house must also be a sliding door frame, a frame for hanging furniture, a frame for curtains, a frame for hanging clothes.’

The cost of construction is thus reduced by assigning multiple roles to the structure. What's more, the modular logic of the structure allows for a flexible organization which can be reconfigured according to the changing needs of the occupant.

The team at MIA Design Group comments on the resulting Binh Thuan House: ‘We created a house where the load-bearing structure presents a true architecture form, and then the plays the furniture parts as well. The space of the architecture at this time has created a premise for users to participate in shaping the aesthetic in the next stage.

‘Depending on the needs of use and lifestyle, the general aesthetic of the building will be flexible corresponding to the modular system without causing conflict with the architect's original design.’

‘This design experience has question us how to build when the resources around us become limited, which values turn superficial and invariant over time. Sometimes, the basic is sometimes the best we can do!‘