This hotel project is situated in BenTre, a suburban town about 80 kilometers southwest of Ho Chi Minh City. BenTre is one of the provinces within the Mekong Delta, known for its fertile rice fields and abundant coconut groves. The project is a boutique hotel featuring roughly 30 rooms, designed to cater to tourists and tour groups exploring the Mekong Delta.
The client requested a low-cost design that feels open and natural. The site is long and narrow, measuring 28 meters wide and 128 meters deep. While the site faces the roadside, deeper into the property you can see the beautiful coconut groves characteristic of BenTre.
Due to the necessity of allowing emergency vehicles access within the site, the building design is long and narrow, creating an extended circulation path. The main design challenge was to encourage guests to explore the back of the building without feeling bored. This hotel is an ‘experience design.’ We focused on creating a unique hotel for BenTre where, despite the site’s limitations, guests can immerse themselves in the richness of nature.
The design encourages guests to experience the rich natural environment of the Mekong Delta through a carefully planned sequence. Given the site’s extreme narrowness, a corridor was necessary for the building. This means guests walk a considerable distance from the street entrance to reach the back of the hotel. To make this journey engaging, the guest rooms are positioned at varying angles to the site, forming a “zigzag” layout rather than a straight line.
The building consists of five clusters of guest rooms connected by a corridor that alternates its position at each junction, switching sides with the rooms. This arrangement enhances peripheral views and breaks the monotony of long corridors, creating a diverse and meandering path where visitors can enjoy a variety of scenes.
The winding and recessed sections of the building create garden spaces filled with palm and tropical trees. As guests walk along the first floor, they encounter green gardens at every turn, including entrances, restaurants, and other public areas. The architect carefully arranged corridors and staircases in taller structures to frame important views of the landscape and the magnificent coconut groves beyond.
The ceramic tiles used are handmade materials sourced locally. In the Mekong Delta, many factories produce unglazed tiles. For this project, these handmade bricks were fired at a brick factory in the suburbs and used for the exterior walls. Each brick’s unique, uneven color adds warmth and character that mass-produced materials lack.
Particularly on the second and third floors, the guest rooms and corridors feature brick walls with gaps between the bricks. These serve as sunshades and screens, allowing striking light patterns to enter and shift throughout the day.
The use of these distinctive local materials combined with lush greenery gives the hotel a unique identity, setting it apart from other accommodations. Our design intent was for the hotel to ‘blend deeply into the spiritual heart of BenTre province.’ Guests will experience a variety of scenes through the building’s architectural features, feeling connected to BenTre’s natural beauty simply by exploring the hotel. The play of light throughout the day further enhances this experience.
Project Drawings
△ First Floor Plan
△ Plan View
△ Elevation Drawing
△ Shape Generation Diagram
Project Information
Architect: Sanuki Daisuke Architects
Area: 1,875 square meters
Year: 2021
Photographer: Hiroyuki Oki
Manufacturer: Toto
Lead Architect: Sanuki Daisuke
Architects: Bui Thanh Minh, Nguyen Huynh Bao Ngoc
Architectural Design: sda SANUKI DAISUKE Architects
Structural Engineer: 86 Mechanical Construction and Commercial Company Limited
MEP Engineer: Technical Hung Viet Company Ltd.
Location: BenTre, Vietnam
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