Home is where the bark is
Most houses could be spruced up with a bit of greenery but some architects have begun to embed living trees within the structure of their buildings. Jonathan Glancey branches out
By Jonathan Glancey
Vo Trong Nghia was born in 1976, a year after the Vietnam war ended. During that 19-year conflict, napalm bombs dropped by United States aircraft petrified great tracts of forest around Phú Thùy, his hometown. Some of the remaining trees fell victim to Vo Trong’s poverty: he earned money by selling them for timber.
“You have to survive,” he says, but he felt guilty: “that’s why I need to plant again.” His yearning for absolution is reflected in his remarkable yet simple architecture, which has reintroduced nature to Ho Chi Minh City. Here, just 0.25% of the urban fabric comprises green space (compared with 27% in New York). Vo Trong’s Tree House (below), a modest, low-cost and readily reproducible residential project, is shoehorned between run-of-the-mill modern buildings in Tan Binh, one of the most densely populated districts of the city.
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