Proud dad dies swimming with son at local beach
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Reddish-brown bricks made from local stone were used for the construction of SuoiHai Villa, a low-slung home in rural Vietnam designed by local studio APDI Architecture.
Situated overlooking Suoi Hai Lake and the famous Tản Viên Peak, the dwelling is one of the only buildings in the picturesque area.
This informed its unobtrusive single-storey profile and APDI Architecture's use of local materials such as bricks made from laterite – rusty-red stone formed from the leaching of rocks and soil.
"The main desire of the client and the project is to enhance the interaction between humans and nature from various perspectives, and to judiciously use locally characteristic materials to harmonise with the environment," director Nhâm Chí Kiên told Dezeen.
"The goal was to create a vibrant living space seamlessly blending into the natural landscape," he added.
SuoiHai Villa's long, narrow plan provides almost all of its spaces with a view over the lake to the south through full-height windows. The less exposed northern side is sheltered by perforated brick walls.
In the centre of SuoiHai Villa, a living, dining and kitchen area sits beneath a large pyramid roof with a skylight at its apex, flanked by the main bedroom to the west and smaller guest rooms to the east.
Three small courtyard gardens break up the interior, providing ventilation and more intimate spaces for connection to the outdoors, in contrast to the expansive views of the lake.
"[The gardens] resemble 'fragments' of smaller natural elements that flow into the building, blurring the lines between inside and outside," explained the studio.
"Large glass panels are used to optimise the views from the inside, but climate solutions are meticulously calculated to ensure maximum energy efficiency for the structure."
A long area of bamboo decking that lines the southern edge of the building steps down to a pool and terrace, partially sheltered by a long section of wall that extends out of the home.
Dark wooden carpentry, plaster walls and grey stone floors add warmth to the interiors, while a textured laterite wall is left exposed at the centre of the living area to further blend inside and outside.
"There is a contrast between the more refined finish of the laterite and the rougher finish, creating a uniqueness in the architecture by combining sophistication with the natural essence of the material," Kiên told Dezeen.
Atop SuoHai Villa, a grass roof provides a natural form of insulation, lined by a drainage system topped by gravel.
Elsewhere in Vietnam, other homes designed to connect with nature include Labri House by Nguyen Khai Architects & Associates and De Chill House by X11 Design Studio.
The photography is by Trieu Chien.
January 5, 2024
3 min read
Buying out and razing homes harmed by Hurricane Sandy boosted business development, jobs and property values in nearby neighborhoods
A beach-front house and a car are damaged in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy in Belle Harbor section of Queens, in New York, November 1, 2012.
CLIMATEWIRE | Local property values and business development increased after a large government program was used to purchase flood-damaged homes in the wake of one of the nation's most expensive hurricanes.
The findings by researchers who studied a New York home buyout program offer an economic endorsement of the practice of acquiring damaged homes and then razing or redeveloping them to avoid using public funds to repeatedly fix houses in high-risk flood zones. The report comes as scientists say climate change is intensifying downpours and other causes of inundation.
Researchers with Resources for the Future, an economic think tank focused on environmental policies, took the unusual step of analyzing local property values and business development following the purchase of 1,300 homes by the NY Rising Buyout and Acquisition Program after Hurricane Sandy devastated parts of the East Coast in 2012. The program generated nearly $5 billion in benefits through higher property values, job creation and enhanced resilience, the researchers found.
Most studies of home buyout programs have assessed how much flood damage was averted by demolishing houses and leaving the lots vacant.
“This kind of program is an effective disaster recovery program,” said Penny Liao, a co-author and economist at Resources for the Future. “A lot of times local communities are wary of these programs. But in general we find these programs do create positive economic impacts."
The buyouts resulted in economic benefits that were nearly eight times as much as the $640 million cost of the program, the researchers estimated.
The report, which is described as a working paper, stopped short of saying the program resulted in “gentrification” — when wealthier people move into a neighborhood and displace longtime residents — because homeownership rates are high in the affected areas and few renters were displaced. The program mostly focused on homes in Staten Island and Long Island.
“The economic changes that we see are consistent with the neighborhoods undergoing gentrification,” Liao said, before adding, “The positive impact probably dominates because most of the homes in these neighborhoods are owner-occupied.”
The New York program was unusual because roughly half the 1,300 properties were converted to open space and the other half were sold for redevelopment. Most buyout programs involve only creating open space as they prioritize eliminating flood damage.
New York paid for the program primarily with the $4.5 billion in disaster aid the state received from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development after Sandy, which NOAA ranks as the fifth-costliest disaster in U.S. history, with $87 billion in damage.
The researchers analyzed neighborhoods immediately around the 1,300 properties — many of which were clustered — and found property values and business development increased by a greater margin than in nearby areas.
The report says that a single state buyout “significantly increases property values” within a 1-kilometer radius. The buyouts also had “positive impacts on nearby business establishments and urban amenities.”
Properties that the state bought and sold to a developer generally produced larger benefits than properties the state converted to open space, the researchers found.
New York targeted highly damaged homes in ravaged areas for buyouts. The communities are mostly middle-income or upper-middle-income parts of Staten Island and Nassau and Suffolk counties and exclude wealthy areas on Long Island’s North Shore and East End, which were not heavily damaged.
The report expands on previous research about buyout programs and Sandy’s effect on the New York City area.
Previous studies have shown that the storm decreased property values throughout the region in part by raising awareness of flood risk. Those studies did not analyze the New York buyout program.
Other studies have shown that buyouts are effective at reducing flood damage but create community concerns by resulting in conspicuous vacant lots and lost revenue from property taxes.
Reprinted from E&E News with permission from POLITICO, LLC. Copyright 2022. E&E News provides essential news for energy and environment professionals.
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Alice Springs Local Court list, Friday, January 5 NT NewsThe mayor of Pays Fouesnantais, a coastal township in Brittany in northwestern France, announced his municipal authority had been hit by a “large-scale” cyberattack that had taken down all of its community services.
The nature of the attack has not yet been confirmed. Roger Le Goff, the mayor, told local newspaper Ouest-France that the incident was “a big problem” and confirmed that all of the authority’s IT services had been rendered inoperable.
The only functioning system is the passport and national identity card service, which is compartmentalized from the township’s own IT network and administered centrally by the French government.
A message on the council’s website warns that “all services of the community … are impacted” including a local aquatic leisure center and the town’s CIAS (Community Social Action Center) a type of state-sponsored community center in France that provides support for vulnerable people.
Despite the impact, the authority stressed that the community center and the leisure center would remain open to the public as per their usual times, but with a degraded service.
The local area’s 10,000 residents have been asked to defer any non-urgent enquiries. Le Goff said the attack was detected on Friday and staff were “in the middle of analyzing the damage. We cut everything to isolate the problem and take stock,” he told Ouest-France.
The attack comes amid a spate of similar incidents affecting French organizations in recent weeks, including those affecting an online parcel service, another impacting an online news site, and one affecting CACG, an ecological engineering company.
France was among the 40 signatories to a recent pledge by the Counter Ransomware Initiative “to publicly denounce ransomware and those who perpetrate these devastating attacks” and refuse to pay in the case of an attack.
The pledge only commits government-controlled organizations to not pay in the case of an incident, although the signatories said they “strongly discourage anyone from paying a ransomware demand.”
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Alexander Martin is the UK Editor for Recorded Future News. He was previously a technology reporter for Sky News and is also a fellow at the European Cyber Conflict Research Initiative.
