Kontum Indochine Café is designed as a part of a hotel complex along Dakbla River in Kontum City, Middle Vietnam. Adjacent to Dakbla Bridge, a gateway to Kontum City, the cafeteria serves as a breakfast, dinner and tea venue for hotel guests. It also functions as a semi-outdoor banquet hall for wedding ceremonies. Located on a corner plot, the Café is composed of two major elements: a main building with a big horizontal roof made of bamboo structure and an annex kitchen made of concrete frames and stones.
The main building has a rectangular plan surrounded by a shallow artificial lake. All elevations are open to the air: the south facade faces the main street along Dakbla River, the east to the service street, the west to a restaurant and banquet building belonging to the hotel complex and the north to the annex kitchen which serves the Café. By providing shadow under the bamboo roof and maximizing the cool air flow across the water surface of the lake, the open-air indoor space successfully operates without using air conditioning even in a tropical climate. The roof is covered by fiber-reinforced plastic panels and thatch. The translucent synthetic panels are partly exposed in the ceiling to provide natural light in the deep center of the space under the roof.
The challenge of the project is to respect the nature of bamboo as a material and to create a distinctive space unique to bamboo. via
