TS VEIL

Project type: Rennovation | Hospitality

Completed Year: 2025 | Area: 300sqm | Location: Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Lead Architects: Khoa Vu, Anh Ta | Local Interior Design: Siri Interior

Construction Manager: Tuan Trang | Client: Rehab Station - Social Dining

Photographer: Chuong Nguyen

Ts Veil is a renovation of a 300-square-meter, three-story villa in the heart of District 2, Ho Chi Minh City—an area rapidly evolving with a dense mix of residential homes, small shops, and local eateries. Rather than opting for demolition and new construction, the project carefully preserves the building’s core structural framework, including the concrete frame, staircase, floor plates, and roof, while reimagining both its architectural presence and spatial performance through a new system of skins—outer and inner.

The central design concept revolves around the idea of a veil: a soft, layered boundary that mediates between the lively street and the intimate, atmospheric interior. This new outer skin is composed of expanded metal mesh panels supported by a precast concrete and steel substructure, forming a porous enclosure that allows for airflow, filtered light, and a shifting sense of opacity and openness. At the tight turning corner of the site, the veil peels open to form a gentle urban gesture—a shaded, inviting threshold that draws people inward. This gesture transforms the building into a soft urban inflection, offering a breathable, responsive corner in a dense and vibrant neighborhood.

Ts VEIL is a low-impact intervention that models how architecture can be regenerative and socially responsive. By reusing the villa’s core structure, the project significantly reduces embodied carbon and construction waste. More than a sustainable strategy, the architecture is socially inclusive: it connects visually and physically to the street, encourages informal gathering, and softens the edge between private program and public life. By gently veiling and unveiling space, Ts Veil offers a new paradigm for how buildings in dense tropical cities can be reimagined—at once open, adaptable, and attuned to their context.

View of Ts Veil's street-facing façade, showing the shimmering metal mesh draped over the exposed concrete structure.

Beyond its formal expression, the veil also performs as a passive and active environmental device. Its perforated surface promotes cross-ventilation throughout the building, while an integrated misting system embedded in the screen delivers cooling microclimates during Saigon’s peak summer heat. Together, the mesh and mist act as a climatic buffer, creating comfort while minimizing the need for mechanical cooling.

Together, the veil and the interior form a dual-layer strategy that reframes the relationship between street and space—one that blurs the boundary between inside and outside, between enclosure and exposure. Ts Veil is not just a renovation; it is a reinterpretation of building life in a tropical urban setting—a space that breathes, shades, and invites, offering a model for how light architectural interventions can reframe existing structures with nuance, resilience, and quiet power.

Inside, the renovation introduces a complementary inner skin that reinforces the project's raw yet refined aesthetic. Materials such as glass block walls, exposed concrete, unfinished steel, and minimal detailing define the new spatial character—honest, tactile, and quietly modern. The use of glass block further amplifies the interplay of light and texture, softly refracting daylight while offering privacy and glow. These carefully considered surfaces create an open, adaptable interior, where the architecture maintains a balance between robustness and calm, informality and intention.

Abstract concept drawing. the project acts as a soft gesture in the urban fabric (left) & initial concept sketches of double-layering facade (right)