The Hut

The Hut stands in the rice fields beside the Cai River outside Nha Trang. a21studio built it in 2015 as a patch of shade for a few farmers, relatives of the architects, using the old woven bamboo boats that were once part of daily life along the river. It covers 6.5 m².

For generations the houses along the Cai lived with a few days of flooding each year, and the round woven boat was how people got around when the water rose. As hydropower dams went up upstream, the floods stopped coming. The boats lost their use and ended up hung above kitchen fires or left in gardens, and the craft of weaving them has nearly died out in Nha Trang.

The architects took these boats back out into the fields. Two of them are lifted on tall bamboo poles and hang at different heights, open to the wind on every side. They cast enough shade for someone to sit or lie down during a break from work, with the paddy and the mountains all around.

There is no foundation, no concrete and no walls, and no working out of ventilation or lighting. a21studio say they had grown tired of all that and were looking for a kind of freedom through architecture. What stands in the field is a few poles, two boats and their shadows.