Thatched bamboo roofs shelter a beach hut resort built by Vo Trong Nghia Architects on a small island off the Cat Ba Archipelago on Vietnam's northern coast.

Castaway Island Resort can house around 150 tourists, and sits on a 3000-square-metre strip of private beach sandwiched between a green mountain range and Lan Ha Bay.

A parabolic bamboo roof shelters a restaurant that sits alongside five residential huts and a pavilion on a stretch of sandy beach on the tropical island, which is only accessible by boat.

Vo Trong Nghia Architects' designed the bamboo structures of the Castaway Island Resort to sit lightly on the beach so that they are both environmentally friendly and easy to remove without affecting the landscape.

Thin poles of bamboo, which have been treated by being soaked in mud and smoked, were used to create frame modules.

These were assembled on-site using bamboo dowel nails, and tightened with rope.

Simple huts, largely open to the elements and covered by arched thatched roofs, provide two levels of sleeping accommodation. The facades were built from recycled timber shutters.

Castaway Island Resort's restaurant has been designed as a semi-outdoor space. A simple bar and series of tables sit underneath a large, undulating roof, its structure left exposed to the interior and thatched on the exterior.

"Each of the 13 bamboo-shell units is composed of 80 straight sections of bamboo, creating a wavy ceiling and a rhythmic roofscape," said the architecture studio.

"Despite the construction of the project, the site is left intact, the nature preserved thanks to the environmentally-friendly bamboo structures."

Bamboo is often explored as a highly versatile building material.

In 2017, Chiangmai Life Architects created a similarly undulating bamboo roof for a sports hall in Thailand, and in China's Fujan province students from the University of Hong Kong created a woven bamboo pavilion.

Vo Trong Nghia established his Ho Chi Minh City studio in 2006. The studio has previously built a building at Hanoi university with a checkerboard facade that incorporates trees, and a house with fruit trees growing from its roof in Hanoi.

A cafe designed by the studio in Vietnamese city of Vinh was shortlisted in the Rebirth project category of Dezeen Awards 2018.

Photography is by Hiroyuki Oki.

Project credits:

Architect firm: Vo Trong Nghia Architects
Principal architects: Vo Trong Nghia, Takashi Niwa
Design team: Nguyen Duc Trung, Nguyen Minh Khuong, Koji Yamamot