Excerpt: The Running Bean Hanoi, designed by Red5Studio, is an adaptive reuse of a house to convert it into a coffee shop. They use the method of integrating square cubes, slanted arrays or diagonal cuts combined with glass materials, glass bricks with blue light tone to create a sense of movement and spread of the freezing. The facade of the building was stripped of the old mortar layer to reveal the old bricks wall. The Gothic pattern are wrapped in stainless steel to make it more contemporary.
Project Description
[Text as submitted by Architect]
“Frozen the Heritage”
To add the contemporary to a building which has conservation value right in the heart of Hanoi is the math that we need to solve this time for The Running Bean – while we head North.
Current condition overview:
This is an ancient house located right in the center of Hanoi, after several forms of business – obviously this place no longer conserve the original design.
The building is quite narrow in width, lack of natural lights, the original structure is almost corrupt. However, the old inherent with a few Gothic lines and the ideal height is the spotlight of the remains.
There are many ways to preserve a legacy value but Red5 choose to freeze it. Why do we call it FROZEN? Imagine the symbol of the iceberg, spreading cold air, freezing corners and spaces inside the ancient house.
We use the method of integrating square cubes, slanted arrays or diagonal cuts combined with glass materials, glass bricks with blue light tone to create a sense of movement and spread of the freezing.
The facade of the building was stripped of the old mortar layer to reveal the old bricks wall. The Gothic pattern are wrapped in stainless steel to make it more contemporary. Instead of directly entering the building from the main gate, we pushed it back a little deeper, the entrance gate is now made on a glass wall – paneled by 2 different types which is transparent and translucent glass to create the image of the transparent block of ice with cuts inside. Leading the way in, there is glass-brick floor that reveal the raw cement floor laying beneath. The heart of the ground floor is the open coffee counter, which was made of transparent glass bricks and stainless steel, above the counter there is a diagonal rectangular block made of blue glass and stainless steel to strongly resonate the freezing movement. We removed the finishing mortar layer on both of the side walls, put an extra layer of beveled glass to match the slanted counter ceiling. Because of disanvantage about the width, we want to increase the original height of the building, by placing an additional layer of mirror to make it feel higher and more airy.
The yellow light layer was chosen to be the main light, but we added a layer of blue light inside the counter ceiling to create the color effect and the feel of the iceberg.
Next, there is sitting area for 2-3 guests that just want to take a quick sip of coffee. This area use concrete walls and layers of glass wall to hide the kitchen area and technical area – to make it seem larger. Highlight with the open ceiling, the atrium is responsible for providing light during the day. Main aisle – the stairs system was made of glass and blue LED light, create a feeling of walking inside the iceberg. The first floor, we carefully use arrays of box shape made from glass, mirror, painted plaster – to integrate multi-material box shape layers on top of each other, to make it feels like you are inside the icebox.
As for the old brick walls, some is kept, the other is combined with the off-white effect wall. In the evening, the entire space is covered with a layer of blue LED light to create the feel of the iceberg – same as the ground floor. Because the need to enlarge the area and the number of seats required, we changed the structure from two to three floors plus the interwoven mezzanines. The ceiling is pushed up to create spaces for natural light, to overcome the lack of light problem at first.
Entire furniture of this project is made of materials that resonate with the space: stainless steel, industrial leather, terrazzo, old wood and old bricks remains of the house.
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