As much as I love modernist architecture in Vietnam, sometimes I come across an example that has been taken a little too far. This house is quiet quite different for Viet Nam:
It looks like a small office building, but it is in a residential district far from any commercial areas. This is located along Lương Định Của Street in the An Phú area of rural District 2 in Ho Chi Minh City.
Besides being relentlessly symetrical, the stone materials are different than most modernist Vietnamese houses. It displays none of the surface or structural articulation common to Vietnamese modernist houses, and therefore is minimalist like much of international modernist architecture.
This is an interesting experiment, but remains too mysterious at this time. It does not look lived in enough. It is neither a standard 4-meter wide "tube house" nor a villa. It is hard to figure out whether it is two units, and how to approach the house. I need to come back sometime in the daytime (this photo was taken at dusk on a Sunday) to see if the large entry door is open and how people approach this house (or office building if that is what it is, although it is often both in Việt Nam).
