A farming house design competition, seen as a move to combat architectural ignorance about the needs of over 70 per cent of the country’s population, . . .

Conflicting styles of construction and design make the architecture in a small village in the northern province of Ninh Binh appear disorderly.

One of the prize-winning ideas included green houses, totally made of and furnished with bamboo, powered by a solar battery system, while another stuck to floating houses built on cross-shaped buoys, which could connect neighbouring houses to each other and create playgrounds.

All of the 46 designs featured in the competition are well within a farming family’s budget, with one of the designs below the VND50 million (US$2,780) threshold.

“We have long ignored houses for rural areas. Now one of the major goals of the association [Viet Nam Architects Association] is to have many more nicer houses in the countryside,” association chairman Nguyen Tan Van told the press before the award ceremony started.

Architects had only focused on urban houses and forgotten an important fact that 70 per cent of Viet Nam’s population live in the countryside, said Van.

This has led to a chaotic planning and poorly designed rural architecture, according to association vice chairman Hoang Dao Kinh.

“No-one is giving farmers an idea of how to build a house that is both nice but good value. Neither has any organisation or architect developed a positive and well-designed countryside village model,” said Kinh.

Meanwhile poorly planned and aesthetically lacking architecture is invading rural areas, said Van.

“Some parts of the northern countryside has become a lame exhibition of Romanesque architecture while the world today is heading to green architecture, which Vietnamese villages have possessed since their early days. They are ponds, green gardens and non-polluting materials,” he said.

“And architects are to blame. So we organised this competition to make amends.”

Van said the association might gather the prize-winning designs from the competition into a book for farmers’ reference and bring all 46 projects to a public exhibition.

The competition aimed to display the best designs for farm houses in the northern mountainous region, the northern delta, central coastal region, the Central Highlands, and the south.

Apart from seven first prizes, 16 designs won second prizes and 23 others received runners-up prizes.

VietNamNet/Viet Nam News