Taking its cues from a cuckoo clock, Cuckoo House is a cafe combined with a four-person house in Da Nang, Vietnam, designed by architecture studio Tropical Space.
Built entirely from local clay bricks, the coffee shop forms a single-storey base, while the two-storey home sits on top and cantilevers out over the green space below.

Cuckoo House's ground floor is wrapped by a brick shell, made permeable by large arched openings. Half of this area forms a large outdoor courtyard, while the other half houses the glass box of the coffee shop.

The various elements of the programme are all held together by what the architects called "buffer layers", areas of loosely programmed space that encourage movement out of rooms and chance encounters.
"Habits mean most people's daily lives usually take place in functional spaces," said the architects.
"We have detached the walls that define these spaces to offer buffer space, urging people to leave their rooms and join together."

For the home, these buffer areas are the uncovered space between the three blocks. They take the form of elevated, planted alleyways that run through the brick forms of the house, which is split into three distinct blocks.

Depending on the level of privacy desired, various areas of the house can be connected or closed off via these buffer areas, through windows and small cuckoo clock-style wooden doors.
These open areas are also part of the natural ventilation strategy, allowin...