Mekong Wetland Co-habitation

The project is a design for an open eco-tourism facility in the Trasu Melaleuca jungle of the Mekong Delta in Vietnam. The diverse and rich landscape has made this wetland jungle an ideal destination for researchers and for wildlife enthusiasts.

This wetland jungle is best traversed by canoe, so people usually visit in flood seasons from September to February, though climate change is extending the dry seasons these days. Architecture’s intervention can participate in supporting new ways to sustain this environment.

The project is a network of pavilions searching for a contemporary vernacular architecture for the Mekong Delta. Local materials and open sculpted forms adapt better to the site environment and create a series of objects which transpose the conical Mekong brick kiln into a lightweight, floating form. The series explores the relationship between local natural and cultural environments and investigates structure that can bring humans further into the wetland jungle for all seasons of the year, and in varied flood levels. The series of small Melaleuca buildings spread apart and are connected by walkways, hiding in the dense Melaleuca jungle. This experiment in architecture and its inhabitants disappearing into the natural environment, also gives new form to that desire.