The Wheatcroft Residence is modeled after a traditional Hanoi tube house. These houses are so long and so deep that they typically have internal courtyards to provide natural light and natural ventilation at mid-block locations. Passage through the house is a movement between inside and outside, external space and internal space.
We’ve taken this vernacular model and updated it. Not only can one travel through the house in the traditional method, we introduced a second, typically Japanese element: moving walls. Walls, in the Japanese sense, are really screens and as the screens open and close they create either closure or transparency.
Even the built form is considered as a void. The central social space in the house is the family dining room. This room is located at the very center of the house between the two internal courtyards and the brick house. To accentuate the sense of the open center in the house, the structural system for the glass house is steel, unlike the rest of the house, which is concrete. In this manner, the structural system of the project responds to nuances in the architectural concept.