Nguyen Qui Duc’s Mountain Home in Vietnam

Vietnamese American writer Nguyen Qui Duc returned to his native Vietnam in 2006. A year later, he bought land in the mountains of Tam Dao, 52 miles from Hanoi. When planning the house, Duc decided to work mostly with glass and stone, easily available materials that local workers were familiar with. Yet rather than following his neighbors’ lead by building several stories high to squeeze more living space onto the narrow plot, he anchored the single-story modernist structure into the cliff. From town, all that is visible is a stone wall on the edge of the mountain.