"Thang House" work (Photo: Internet)
Accordingly, his "Thang House" work, built in the central city of Da Nang, won the residential-single house category. Meanwhile, the Viettel Academy won the Merit award in the academy-office category.
The award is held to find green buildings - be it new, renewable, re-engineered or feature-converted, and includes six categories: residential-single house, residential-townhouse, commerce, academy-office, urban area, and social development project. The projects must be built in Asia or Australia.
Architect Vo Trong Nghia and coworkers will be honoured at the BCI Asia Awards 2020 ceremony (scheduled to take place on May 28, 2021).
Additionally, the award-winning project will be featured in FuturArc magazine as well as on the award web and other social media channels.
Thang House was completed in 2019, with a total floor area of 250 m2. The owner of the project wishes to have a village style house, where the air is fresh, surrounded with meadows and tropical green patches.
The project is divided into two parts. The first part includes the living spaces of the family, while the rest of the building is considered as "Green Lungs".
In terms of improving the sustainability and reducing the project use costs, rainwater is reused through an automatic water supply system and used for watering the plants. The building tries to reduce the amount of electricity consumed so that the project can become self-sufficient in materials and energy.
Viettel Academy is one of the modern building with bricks in Thach That District, Hanoi.
Brick is a popular local material, which is reasonably priced. When using bricks with careful design, it is possible to create a rustic and unique material surface. Completing outside the house with naked brick helps to save significant construction and maintenance costs.
The work was built as tall and low blocks of different sizes, interwoven within a lush green gardens. The building blocks are linked by a large roof system and corridors.
This design creates a rich mix of spatial dimensions, with many interesting perspectives. The building has a central lake that plays a role in creating reflections, emphasizing the beauty of the materials as well as cooling the building.
Unitel recognized for contributions to Laos’ digital transformation
Star Telecom (Unitel), a joint venture between Vietnam’s Viettel Global JSC and Laos Asia Telecom, was honoured with two prizes including “Innovation in Public Administration Services” and “Innovation in Consumer Products and Services” at the 2020 Asia Pacific Stevie Awards, the Vietnam News Agency reports.
Logo of Unitel (Photo: wonderlandlaos.blogspot.com)
The awards recognise Unitel for expanding new services and updating technologies to support the Laos Government during its digital transformation.
The Lao Ministry of Science and Technology chose Unitel to act as a consultant to build e-government and smart healthcare projects. The agreements were under its national digital transformation strategy.
In addition, Unitel has handed over a civil status management programme to the Lao Ministry of Home Affairs. Thanks to this programme, all citizenship data has been uploaded to the system, improving the capacity to manage data and information about people, and helping reduce administrative procedures. This is the first time that Laos has implemented the management of electronic civil status instead of the registration of civil status as before.
Unitel was the first unit licensed by the Central Bank of Laos to officially deploy Mobile Money and is also the only company developing this service in the country, offering a new secure and quick payment method for more than six million people. This field is expected to generate 30-50 percent of Unitel's telecoms revenue in the future.
General Director of Unitel Luu Manh Ha said: “With the advantages of digital transformation in Vietnam and Peru, Unitel has quality resources to bring a better life to the people in Laos.”
In the first half of the year, with financial revenue reaching 101 percent of the plan, Unitel continued to be the No 1 telecom company in Laos, accounting for 57 percent of the market share.
Auto sales fall 14 percent in August
Automobile sales in August were down 14 percent against July, to 20,655 units, despite the introduction of a range of promotional programmes, according to the Vietnam Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (VAMA), according to the Vietnam News Agency.
Photo for illustration (Source: baodautu.vn)
Sales of passenger cars fell 12 percent, to 15,419 units, while those of commercial vehicles fell 19 percent to 4,966 and special-use vehicles 20 percent to 270.
There were 12,869 domestically-assembled vehicles sold during the month, down 20 percent against July, along with 7,786 imported cars, a fall of 2 percent.
Analysts said that the reduction of registration fees on domestically-assembled automobiles by half, which led to fall of 15-300 million VND in the total cost of a car, helped boost sales.
Toyota Vietnam led VAMA members, with sales of 4,259 units, followed by Mazda with 2,644 vehicles and Kia with 2,541 vehicles.
Honda Vietnam, however, led in sales growth, selling 1,634 units in August, up 38 percent against July. The CR-V 2020 and City were “hot” models during the month, with respective sales of 935 and 459 units.
VAMA members sold 151,903 automobiles of all kinds in the first eight months of 2020, down 25 percent year-on-year. The decline in the sales of passenger cars was 26 percent, commercial vehicles 22 percent, and special-use vehicles 36 percent.
The figures, however, do not reflect the situation in the market as a whole, as they exclude non-VAMA members such as Audi, Jaguar, Land Rover, Mercedes-Benz, Subaru, Volkswagen, Volvo, VinFast, and TC Motor.
TC Motor alone sold 5,367 vehicles in August and 40,987 vehicles in the first eight months of the year, while VinFast sold 1,494 units in August.
Insiders said the COVID-19 pandemic has led to more cautious spending among consumers, and August coincided with the seventh lunar month, which is not a good month for buying or selling anything in the minds of Vietnamese. The second half of the seventh lunar month is in September, so results may be similar to August, they predict./.