District 2 of Vietnam’s Ho Chi Minh City is one of the Southeast Asian urban hub’s fastest developing areas, currently making its way from being one of the poorest to one of the most modern.
Bridging old and new in this context is key to maintaining the city’s character and history, and this is the approach that Italian architecture firm Locatelli Partners took when designing its latest project there, French-style ‘epicerie’ grocery store complex Le Square.
The arched new spaces inside the old villa, which houses shops and a restaurant.
The scheme, which combines an existing colonial-style villa and an L-shaped new build, contains food shops and a restaurant on the ground level, with co-working spaces and offices upstairs.
A delicate mesh cladding connects the old and new parts in a semi-transparent ‘cloud’. Different colour tones on the cladding help distinguish various parts of the new construction, while Massimiliano Locatelli and his team opened up the interior of the old villa to create generous, arched new spaces, maintaining the original stone staircase at its heart.
As originally featured in the November 2019 issue of Wallpaper* (W*248) – on newsstands now
The complex’s delicate, cloud-like mesh cladding
INFORMATION
locatellipartners.com
-
First look – Bottega Veneta and Flos release a special edition of the Model 600Gino Sarfatti’s fan favourite from 1966 is born again with Bottega Veneta’s signature treatments gracing its leather base
-
We stepped inside the Stedelijk Museum's newest addition in AmsterdamAmsterdam's Stedelijk Museum has unveiled its latest addition, the brand-new Don Quixote Sculpture Hall by Paul Cournet of Rotterdam creative agency Cloud
-
On a sloped Los Angeles site, a cascade of green 'boxes' offers inside outside livingUnStack, a house by FreelandBuck, is a cascading series of bright green volumes, with mountain views
-
Raw, refined and dynamic: A-Cold-Wall*’s new Shanghai store is a fresh take on the industrial lookA-Cold-Wall* has a new flagship store in Shanghai, designed by architecture practice Hesselbrand to highlight positive spatial and material tensions
-
A floor made of tomato skins? Welcome to the Mutti Canteen by Carlo Ratti in ParmaMutti Canteen by Carlo Ratti is a new, environmentally friendly foodie piece of architecture within Parma's green countryside
-
Naples Central Station boasts a wavy, wooden signature roof that is dramatic and sculpturalNaples Underground Central Station by Benedetta Tagliabue is a work of art that’s inviting and vibrant, matching its dynamic context
-
‘Carlo Scarpa: The Complete Buildings’ is an essential tour of the Italian master’s works‘Carlo Scarpa: The Complete Buildings’ is the perfect book for architecture enthusiasts
-
New Aesop Milan store is a haven of beauty and tranquillityThe latest Aesop Milan store to open is a hub of wellness, beauty and tranquillity in the Italian metropolis
-
A new water mirror casts a misty veil over ancient Roman bathsArchitect Hannes Peer reveals a water mirror in Rome – an immersive architectural installation at the heart of the ancient Baths of Caracalla
-
Modernist architecture: inspiration from across the globeModernist architecture has had a tremendous influence on today’s built environment, making these midcentury marvels some of the most closely studied 20th-century buildings; here, we explore the genre by continent
-
Giovanni Michelucci’s dramatic concrete church in the Italian DolomitesGiovanni Michelucci’s concrete Church of Santa Maria Immacolata in the Italian Dolomites is a reverently uplifting memorial to the victims of a local disaster
