Lam Sơn Villa

Lam Sơn Villa is a private family home set within the lush, flat landscape of Đồng Tháp Province — a region defined by its rice fields, waterways, and the quiet cadence of Mekong Delta life. The house was designed to belong fully to its place: open to the landscape, shaped by the climate, and built with materials that speak of the land around it.

Brief & Site

The client — a family of four with strong ties to the region — came to Z.FSO with a clear desire: a home that felt rooted in its landscape rather than imposed upon it. They wanted generous space for family life and for entertaining, a connection to the garden and the natural surroundings, and a quality of quietness that the density of city living had long denied them.

The site is a large, flat plot on the outskirts of the provincial capital, bordered on two sides by mature fruit trees and facing west toward an open view across paddy fields. The prevailing breeze comes from the south. These conditions — the view, the breeze, the shade of the existing trees — became the primary generators of the design.

Organisation & Plan

Z.FSO organised the villa as a series of pavilions connected by a spine of covered outdoor walkways. Rather than a single enclosed volume, the house is conceived as a loose cluster of spaces — living, dining, sleeping, service — each with its own relationship to the garden and the sky. The gaps between pavilions become as important as the built rooms themselves: sheltered terraces, planted courtyards, and shaded passages that extend the living space into the landscape throughout the year.

The public rooms — living and dining — are positioned to face the western view across the paddy fields, with full-height sliding panels that dissolve the boundary between interior and exterior. The family bedrooms are oriented toward the quieter, more sheltered garden to the north. A separate guest suite occupies a small independent pavilion at the far end of the plot, connected to the main house by a garden path.

Climate & Comfort

Thermal comfort in the Mekong Delta demands careful design. The combination of high humidity, intense solar radiation, and frequent afternoon storms creates conditions that can make poorly designed houses deeply uncomfortable for much of the year. At Lam Sơn Villa, Z.FSO applied a comprehensive passive strategy that renders the main living areas naturally comfortable without mechanical cooling for the majority of the year.

Wide overhanging eaves — extending 1.8 metres beyond the facade line — shade the walls and glazing from direct sun while allowing diffuse light to penetrate deep into the rooms. Cross-ventilation is achieved through a careful alignment of openings on the south and north faces, drawing the prevailing breeze through every habitable space. A series of planted courtyards introduces evaporative cooling at the heart of the plan. The bedrooms are fitted with ceiling fans and reversible louvres, allowing fine control of airflow through the night.

Materials & Craft

The material palette of Lam Sơn Villa is drawn entirely from the region. The structural frame is in-situ concrete, left exposed in the ceilings and service spaces. Walls are built in locally fired brick, plastered externally in a lime wash that breathes with the changing humidity and weathers to a warm, textured finish over time.

Floors throughout are finished in large-format terrazzo tiles produced by a local craftsman using stone aggregate sourced from the nearby Mekong riverbed. The joinery — doors, shutters, screens, and cabinetry — is in solid teak, detailed with simple traditional joinery that references the region's craft heritage without pastiche. The roof is finished in traditional Vietnamese clay tiles, their familiar profile a deliberate acknowledgement of the architectural vernacular of the surrounding villages.

Garden & Landscape

The landscape design was developed in close collaboration with the client, who is an avid gardener. The existing fruit trees — mango, longan, and jackfruit — were retained and incorporated into the garden composition, providing shade, fruit, and a sense of deep-rooted permanence that no newly planted tree could match. New planting introduces a layered tropical understorey of ferns, gingers, and heliconia beneath the existing canopy, creating a garden that feels abundant and natural rather than manicured.

A shallow reflecting pool runs along the western terrace, oriented to catch the colours of the evening sky over the paddy fields. It is, in the end, what the house is most about: the pleasure of being in this particular place, at this particular time of day, in this particular quality of light.