The parish of Thoi Hoa is young and large with more than twelve thousand members in an industrial area belonging to the district of Ben Cat, Binh Duong. Known as one of the large production locations in Vietnam, the cityscape of Ben Cat is shaped by the rapid urbanization of the narrow workers’ housing made of corrugated metal sheets between the tube houses. This explains the structure of the members of the Thoi Hoa parish: young, colorful, and active.
The parish priest wishes for a church with the atmosphere of a factory for his members, but this factory, he says, is not for production, but for God’s love. The design follows our liturgical trio concept with all the necessary elements for the tropical urban climate zones (Neumeyer 2002).
The place is a typical narrow urban situation, so vn-a chooses the path as the liturgical principle for the church.
The building is designed with a double skin and several spatial layers to create transparency in the liturgy room and to create the filter at the same time: between the profane world and the sacred liturgical room, between the hot outside space via a threshold and the protected and thus cooled interior.