CAFÉ BI
CAFÉ BI
Location : Kham Thien street, Dong Da district, Hanoi, Vietnam Design firm and Construction management: NH VILLAGE ARCHITECTS Architects : Nguyen Phuong Hieu, Tran Dai Nghia, Tuan Bui, Nguyen Ha Tho, Pham Thu Trang Area : 25 m2 Completed year: 2016 Photo : Le Hoang
A little corner where people gather together inside a huge Hanoi. Café Bi carries a lot of stories about lanes and alleys of Kham Thien Street – a lively street full of timeline marks.
Those stories remain a bold and long intangible value underneath closely roofs, in neighbor’s living lifestyle, daily trading and everyday trafficking on street. It seems to have a time-face which is hiding, lingering and chasing each other. Behind the beauty of this neighborhood was a bitter hard time of those people who love their land and their own past. That’s how the wooden ceiling of café Bi has been made, to combine with shapes of old wooden railing and old sidesteps, baby cots, old lofts and with the “B52” street’s skew skeleton after bombing...
Start from the honest and hospitable café shop owner, who is carrying memories about the street, with a limited budget, these leftover still-good quality wood bars have been regenerated, skived and polished with just a thin and natural coating layer. The modular ceiling is aimed to promote the ability of wood structure while holding the material’s natural aroma, color and grain, yet healthy not only for users but also the workers who produced them.
There something special is that, Kham Thien Str. comprises most lanes in Hanoi with more than 50 lanes, 16 lanes in each odd and even side (only the big alley has been named – excluding small alleys leading to 1-2 homes). Since there are so many corners in the area, the images of gable windows, high near the roofs, became so common with local people, the space wants to keep time by framing all the alley names (such as “Tô Tiền”, “Thiên Hùng”, “Vạn Anh, “Lệnh Cư” and “Hồ Bãi Cát”, etc.)
Many moments are also kept in this Café, recorded by Kham Thien str. Lovers through the ceiling quadrangle. This kind of scenes is surrounding us, that we cannot touch but we can feel it. The feeling of seeking around while it is hiding somewhere beside us, is similar with the feeling when people are driving on the street and alleys of Kham Thien.
