NAQ Architecture Wraps a Narrow Vĩnh Long House in Perforated Brick and Lets Moving Air Do the Cooling

Vĩnh Long sits in the Mekong Delta, where heat and humidity hold for most of the year and the default answer to comfort is a wall-mounted air conditioner. Vĩnh Long House, completed in 2024 by NAQ Architecture under lead architect Nguyễn Anh Quân, starts from a different assumption. On a narrow 150 m² footprint built in concrete and brick, the house treats cooling as a problem of section, porosity and orientation rather than of equipment. The goal is not to eliminate mechanical cooling outright but to make it the exception.

What makes the project worth your attention is how plainly the strategy reads. A perforated terracotta screen faces the street. A skylit stair void cuts through every floor. Rooms line up so air can pass from the front yard to the backyard. None of these moves is new to tropical Vietnamese housing, but here they are combined with discipline, and the drawings show that the architects tested them against the sun path rather than applying them as style. The result is a compact family house that looks relaxed and was carefully reasoned.

A Street Face Made of Gaps

The front of the house is less a facade than a filter. Terracotta bricks are stacked with open joints, so the wall reads as solid from an angle and as lattice when you face it straight on. Behind it, a recessed balcony carries trailing vines, and below, a pierced metal gate continues the same logic at ground level. Even the gate is perforated, which tells you the architects were thinking about airflow and light from the property line inward.

The screen does several jobs at once. It shades the openings behind it, gives the family privacy from a street strung with power lines, and lets breezes through without the need to open a window. At dusk, the logic reverses: interior light leaks outward through the gaps and the house glows like a lantern. The close-up of the brick coursing shows how little craft is needed to achieve this. It depends on spacing, not on special units.

Concrete and Brick at the Edge of a Field

Seen from the side and rear, the house sits beside open grass, with cattle grazing a few metres from its walls. That setting complicates the usual reading of narrow Vietnamese tube houses as purely urban types. Here the long walls are not hemmed in by neighbours, and the architects respond with restraint: a dark concrete flank, a white volume, a red pitched roof. The brick screen is reserved for the ends, where the plan actually breathes.

We like that the house does not try to dress every elevation. The blank sides read as working surfaces, while the porous ends carry the climatic and social life of the building. It is an economical allocation of effort, and it keeps a modest budget focused where it matters.

The Courtyard as a Shaded Threshold

Pass through the gate and you arrive in an entry court paved in terracotta tile, lined with a built-in tiled bench and potted plants. This is the space where the screen pays off most visibly. Sunlight breaks into a lattice of shadows across the floor, so the court stays bright without becoming a heat trap. It works as a car space, a porch and a sitting room in one.

In the evening, with a wall light on orange plaster and ferns crowding the bench, the court becomes the most domestic room in the house. It is a reminder that in this climate the best living space is often half outside, and that a threshold can hold daily life rather than just mark an entrance.

A Stair That Works as a Chimney

The stair is the engine of the house. A rust-red steel flight climbs through a double-height void beneath a louvred skylight, with mesh guardrails that keep views and air moving across the opening. Rattan pendants hang down the shaft, and daylight falls in sharp bands across the white walls. The void ties the floors together visually, and it also gives warm air a route upward and out.

The material choices keep the space light in every sense. Mesh instead of solid balustrades, textured treads painted terracotta, and interior windows that look into the void all reduce the number of surfaces that block air or light. On the upper corridor, the raw concrete ceiling and an orange sofa sit at the edge of the shaft, so circulation doubles as a lounge. This is the moment where bioclimatic thinking and everyday comfort line up most convincingly.

Living Spaces in One Long Room

The ground floor runs as one continuous room: kitchen with timber cabinets and patterned tile backsplash, a dining area under a double-height opening, and a living room that ends in a glass door to a planted terrace. Keeping these spaces undivided is what allows air to cross the full depth of the plan. Each end of the room looks toward a screen, so you are never far from filtered light.

The palette is warm without being precious. Exposed concrete ceilings sit above an orange wall, a copper lamp arm reaches over the dining table, and rattan shades soften the evening light. The tall window above the dining table is a small but well-judged detail, pulling daylight deep into the centre of a narrow plan.

Bedrooms Behind the Screen

Upstairs, the bedrooms sit directly behind the brick lattice and the loggias at each end of the house. Square patches of sunlight fall across the bedding and terrazzo floor, a direct imprint of the screen outside. It is a pleasing effect, though the real value is thermal: direct sun is broken up before it reaches the glass, and the rooms can stay open to the breeze.

Furnishing is spare and practical, with a low timber bed, a bamboo wardrobe rack and a rattan floor lamp. A grey curtain gives the occupant control when the light becomes too much. The bedrooms are not trying to be showpieces; they are calm rooms tuned to their climate.

Plans and Drawings

The plans confirm the narrow-lot logic: a front yard with car space, then living room, kitchen and a ground-floor bedroom, opening to a backyard. The first floor holds two bedrooms around a central family room and the void, with loggias at both ends. The top floor carries a work or prayer area and storage beside the same void. The airflow overlays on the ground and first floor plans are the most useful drawings in the set, tracing breezes straight from front yard to backyard through rooms that never block the path.

The roof plan shows insulated sheet metal, a strip of skylight panels and gutters with drainage noted for each slope, which matters in a region of heavy rain. Sections A-A and B-B show how the open stair stitches the stacked rooms together, while the elevations show the brick screens and planting at both ends. The hand sketches and solstice sun-path studies, at 9:00 and 15:00 on 21 June and 21 December, show the analysis behind the screens and the skylight.

Why This Project Matters

Most new houses across the Mekong Delta are sealed boxes designed around air conditioners. Vĩnh Long House shows that a family-scale budget, common materials and a narrow plot are enough to take a different path. The tools are familiar: perforated brick, a ventilating void, a cross-ventilated plan and an insulated roof. What sets the project apart is that each one is checked against sun and wind diagrams, so the design reads as the result of analysis rather than nostalgia.

For you as a designer, the lesson is about allocation. NAQ Architecture puts effort into the screens, the stair void and the section, and leaves the rest plain. That focus is what makes passive design affordable, and it is why this modest house is a more useful model for tropical housing than many larger and more polished examples.

Vĩnh Long House by NAQ Architecture (lead architect Nguyễn Anh Quân), Vĩnh Long, Vietnam. Area: 150 m². Completed: 2024. Photography by Paul Phan.

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