Soulful Selection

‘When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it,' Khánh Nhã Võ says, quoting her favourite author, Paulo Coelho, to describe how her apartment came to be. Just a few steps away from her children's school in a new building overlooking the Saigon River is the home Võ's family realised in partnership with Sarah Nguyễn and Arturo Moreno of local architecture and interiors firm StudioDuo. ‘I knew right away that I wanted to have skilled hands and minds to turn this apartment into a real home,' she says. ‘ It was really lucky that I came across Sarah Nguyễn's work on Instagram, fell in love with it, and discovered that she has her own firm here in Ho Chi Minh City!'

StudioDuo's name was specifically chosen to reflect the designers' practice of contextualising dualities like light and shadow, form and function, and interior and exterior. Nguyễn, a French creative director, has lived in Vietnam for more than 20 years and speaks the language fluently, while Spanish architect and interior designer Moreno spent nearly five years working with established local architectural firms before co-founding the studio. ‘With StudioDuo, we want to create organic designs befitting Vietnam's tropical climate,' Moreno says. ‘We're fascinated with site-specific solutions that utilise materials honed by centuries of cultural heritage, that are made by talented local craftspeople and have proven to be more effective and sustainable.'

‘From my conversations with Khánh Nhã, I recognised her gravitation towards natural materials and her love for things made in

Vietnam — not only in the way she dresses, mostly in linen pieces from local brands, but in her sensibility for simplicity and understated, quality design,' says Nguyễn. She and Moreno envisioned the 160-square-metre, four-bedroom home to be a casually elegant oasis suited for city life. To enhance the flow of air and natural light in the space, the pair eliminated the pantry adjacent to the dining area to make space for an elegant archway that connects the common areas to the corridor and bedrooms. ‘There's now a clean, unobtrusive line that ties the balcony, living room and dining room together, and the same goes for the corridor,' says Moreno.

A simple palette of white stucco, marble and wood gives the home a warm, uplifting atmosphere. The designers replaced the original tiled floor with French oak parquet, installed Finnish pine on the balcony, and brought in customised bed frames and cabinets built in Vietnam. Nguyễn accompanied Võ on multiple sourcing trips for hand-picked furniture, including a solid oak and concrete kitchen table by District Eight, a local brand known for industrial, Vietnamese-inspired furniture, as well as handmade vases from Đạt Pottery, the ceramic studio Nguyễn attends, and the balcony's ceramic and crystal table from Bình Dương province, a two-hour drive from the city. ‘Vietnam is part of me now,' says Nguyễn. ‘I always love to create something new that also honours the local culture. With every project, we want to tell stories that people can relate to and instantly recognise, to design spaces that they can feel relaxed and at home in, and that we can imagine ourselves living in.'