Inhabited Wetlands

Inhabited Wetlands takes an undesirable site or location in Ca Mau, Vietnam and transforms it into a sought-after quasi-urban environment.

With a main access road, ground-level driveways, upper level network of plinths and piers, and several 20-story slab-towers, a multilayered experience is created in a forest of mangroves.

Various Vietnamese housing typologies are recreated in the tower apartments, including courtyards as key neighborly open spaces, or programmatic patterns such as kitchen and cleaning groupings, washrooms within courtyard access, and bedrooms pushed to the center or ends of the apartments.

Taking site conditions into consideration, maisonettes and double-height areas enable passive/cross-ventilation through diagonally opposed openings and towering apartments create wind tunnels while hovering over the "carpet" of mangroves.