Tropical Architecture Blurs Indoor-Outdoor Boundaries for Wellness-Led Design
Urban Context
Vietnam is developing at breakneck speed, with urban built-up area surging from 220 sq km in 1999 to 994 sq km in 2015. Within Ho Chi Minh City, the amount of urbanised open space grew by some 10.9% between 1999 and 2015, according to MIA Design Studio founder and principal architect Nguyen Hoang Manh. For architects and master planners, this rapid growth has led to high-density residential areas that lack open space and suffer from heavy traffic congestion during peak hours. โBy seeing our city as architects, we see our responsibilities in dealing with the context of the city,โ says Nguyen, who established his practice in Ho Chi Minh in 2003. The firm responds by embedding climate-responsive design and landscape integration into hospitality, resort, and community projects across Vietnam and Southeast Asia.
Design Philosophy
MIA Design Studio has emerged as a pioneering force in master planning, architecture, interior and landscape design. With a three-pronged philosophy around modern living, sustainability and respecting culture and context, the firm has developed strong expertise in hospitality design, particularly in resorts, boutique hotels and wellness retreats. โMany of our projects are located in tropical environments across Vietnam and Southeast Asia, where the relationship between architecture, climate and landscape becomes the core design driver,โ Nguyen tells City & Country. For interior and landscape teams, the firmโs approach treats hospitality architecture as an experience of nature rather than simply a built product. Instead of separating buildings from the landscape, they dissolve the boundary between indoor and outdoor spaces.
Wyndham Garden Phu Quoc
The Wyndham Garden Phu Quoc villas, completed in 2018, were a hospitality project by MIA Design Studio. With no direct view of the sea, Nguyenโs firm overcame the disadvantage by creating a โVietnamese villageโ over some 70,000 sqm. With inward-facing designs opening to the sky, each single-storey villa boasts large courtyards with natural light and ventilation. โWe โdisappearedโ all the architectureโฆ We used very simple landscape or building materials to celebrate the landscape as much as possible,โ says Nguyen, a Master of Architecture graduate from KU Leuven in Belgium. For MEP and interiors, the courtyard model reduces mechanical cooling loads, supports passive ventilation strategies, and allows material palettes to stay local and low-maintenance in humid coastal conditions.
Villa Planning
Placed close to each other, villas are grouped into โsmall clustersโ that share an entryway and yard. That said, each villa retains its privacy with 3m-high walls, with separate living and bedroom areas. Some years later, MIA Design Studio again returned to the project by designing the Wyndham Club House. Inspired by lanterns, the main material selected is bare bricks, blocking out sunlight while allowing for natural ventilation. For architects, the brick envelope functions as a climate screen that modulates heat gain and airflow, reducing reliance on active systems. The clustering strategy also optimizes services routing and drainage while preserving the village-scale experience for guests across the 70,000 sqm site.
The Park Vinh
In 2025, MIA Design Studio racked up a handful of awards for The Park, a quintet of community centre buildings that emerge from rice fields in Vietnamโs Nghe An Province. โThe Park in Vinh was designed with a simple intention: the architecture should feel like part of the landscape rather than an object placed on it,โ says Nguyen. From one long block, the firm divided it into five identical buildings before orienting each block โin different directions in organic waysโ. Canting the buildings towards the sky mitigates exposure to the afternoon sun and gives rise to the appearance of slopes emerging from the ground. The grass-covered facade visually connects the architecture with the surrounding gardens and creates a โdialogueโ with the agricultural landscape, while the green roof helps reduce heat gain and creates a cooler microclimate for the public spaces below.
Lotus Clubhouse
The final, and most recent, project named by Nguyen is the Lotus Clubhouse. Completed in 2025, the project is located within the Eco Retreat project in Long An and has a usable area of approximately 2,000 sqm. Concrete planter boxes house trees, collect rainwater and provide a contiguous canopy for the building users. Three main roof clusters composed of circular forms at varying heights are entirely covered with native plant species, forming a self-sustaining micro-ecosystem. The Lotus Clubhouse combines green landscape surfaces, concrete roof structures and transparent glass facades to create a building that is โboth environmentally responsive and visually connected to its surroundingsโ. Energetic zones such as the restaurant and childrenโs play area open towards the lake, while quieter areas like the spa, lounge and meditation spaces retreat into shaded pockets of greenery.
Sustainability Dialogue
The solar panels that sit atop the green roofs were not part of the original design, says Nguyen. Initially planned for a โdifferent locationโ, the solar panels were shifted to the roofs after a โbig discussionโ with the client. โVietnam is not Singapore. Weโre still an emerging country; when you implement all these green factors, itโs very new for us, and we have to consult a lot with our clients. [Itโs] challenging for the country, where you have to build everything [in an] economic way.โ For consultants and contractors, this highlights the need for early-stage integration of renewables, passive systems, and native planting to balance performance with cost. MIAโs projects show how landscape, envelope, and building services can merge to deliver wellness-led architecture rooted in climate and culture.
Image Courtesy: THE EDGE SINGAPORE
