"If you truly love nature, you will find beauty everywhere" said Vincent van Gogh, and the design of this modern home endeavours to do just that. The Sky House, a project by architects at MIA Design Studio, is located where numerous skyscrapers have been built close together in the metropolitan city of Saigon, Vietnam. This towering border of buildings creates a feeling of being down in a concrete valley, a state not conducive for open and airy living, or in which to bond with nature. The team hatched an architectural plan that would promote inner peace and calmness through links with nature and family, via deep volumes of vertical and horizontal connective space.
Cube planters extrude from the home’s concrete mass, sprouting green leafy life as they climb the different levels of living.
The cubes looks like little drawers pulling out of an enormous white concrete dresser.
The house wears a crown of greenery on its flat roof, which serves the other buildings around and about with a much needed revitalising view of nature.
The modern exterior brings new meaning to the term ‘concrete jungle’.
There is a high density of construction, population and traffic congestion in the city of Saigon. These factors result in a sorrowful lack of green spaces where people might find the tranquility that comes from living in harmony with nature.
Palm fronds loll and create lazy shadows on the building.
Inside of the building, we see at last the solution envisioned by the architects. Family ties are strengthened through use of towering vertical space and gaps in the walls, which allow the parents and children to always connect with one another from any corner of the home. Glass windows look down into a section of the lounge with minimalist furniture. Thankfully, for normal use there seems to be cushions on the wireframe sofas. So it is likely that the below images omit them for artistic effect.
Here, the stripped wireframe sofas look sculptural beneath the intermittent light of a slatted ceiling.
Plant beds surround the sitting area. Natural elements are inserted and carried through every corner of this unique home.
The floor area has not been sectioned into unnecessary rooms, instead, the architects have divided the house so that one half is devoted to sun, wind, water and trees–or just peaceful clear space. The other half of the building is where family activities takes place, although these areas too are minimalistic to promote blissful serenity.
A long kitchen island with a dining extension runs smoothly through part of the family living room. A large but simple glass vase decorates the family’s dinner table.
This visual of the dining area shows the natural wood dining chairs swapped out for clear acrylic ghost chairs, to further the minimalist vibe.
When this piano is played, music must fill the entire home as the sound drifts upward through the vertical void.
Without touching on the land, links between humans and nature have been expressed in many ways. The architecture allows the family to no longer be dependent on their location and its lack of green spaces, because this home design creates an inner landscape.
Daylight falls through the gaps in ceilings and walls to allow the house to receive nature indirectly.
The homeowners are able to feel changes in weather, and the changes brought by passing daylight hours.
The slatted ceiling runs from outdoors to in, which makes the house feel fully interconnected with its courtyards.
Sunlight dapples across a large pool just off the living room, where one can come to reflect.
The largest interior windows are picture windows, but a number of them open to encourage communication across the levels of the home, and for cross ventilation. A huge skylight make vertical connection between the home and the sky.
Wood planking covers terraces and interior floors. Plant beds feature throughout.
Whilst gaps in the walls were instated to increase togetherness, the gaps also now become the main subject of the house. They become frames to further the view of nature in the home, and build a feeling of balance and harmony.
Not one, but two trees grow through multiple levels of the extraordinary home.
Whilst the playroom is tucked safely behind fixed glass, the adults in the upstairs of the home can communicate dinner ideas directly with the cook in the kitchen below!
The first household tree grows its natural beauty right by a glass wall bathroom design. A bathroom vanity table sits by the view.
At the top of the second indoor treetop, the glass wall master bedroom rests quietly.
Vast greenery evokes the zen feeling of sleeping in the great outdoors.
There is no furniture other than the bed and plain bedside shelves in the minimalist bedroom, because what surrounds the room is far more stunning than man-made objects.
A bedroom situated further down the tree trunk follows a similar minimalist ideal.
The kid’s room gets decoration and colour in the form of a toy collection. Just outside the room, a playful rabbit wall hanging make a fun friend around the indoor garden.
Inside the glass wall bathroom, a huge glass shower screen lets the eye meander through the entire floor area.
A unique black faucet fills the sink on the minimalist vanity.
Plants shape the interior just as much, if not more, at night when uplighters throw shadows.
Plants are prolific on the roof.
This is certainly not your average city home.
Section drawing.
First floor plan.
Second floor plan.
Third floor plan.
Rooftop plan.
Roof plan.
