Spending five years researching and creating, 67-year-old artisan Phan Lac Hung in Hanoi crafted a unique 1:1000 scale micro-mahogany communal house weighing 60 kilograms.

Located in Huu Bang, a commune of the city's Thach That district, Huu Bang communal house - the prototype of the miniature communal house - is renowned for its typical Vietnamese ancient architecture. The 330-year-old communal house is also a community space where the village's cultural activities are organized.

Formerly known as the Nom’s village communal house, Huu Bang communal house is recognized as a historical-cultural relic in 1989.

According to the carpenter, the miniature communal house model of Huu Bang took him five years to complete, from the stage of drawing, to searching for materials and implementing the project. 

The communal house model, a thousand times smaller than the real one and weighing about 60 kilograms, is considered the smallest wooden house model in Vietnam at present.  

The love for the village’s communal house prompted him to come up with the idea of crafting a miniature wooden house model. 

Growing up in the land of talented carpenters, Hung himself has 50 years of experience in carpentry. 

The miniature communal house model was researched, conceptualized and completed by the artisan resembling the real one by 99%.

Hung spent six to eight consecutive hours a day to perform complex sculptural stages of the house, from the smallest details.

Crafting other details of the house such as columns, doors, windows and courtyard is a meticulous job that Hung took two months to complete.  

It took him two months to make 70,000 tiny tiles of the communal house’s roof.

The decorative detail of “two-dragon-chained-moon” on the roof was skillful sculpted by the artisan.

The communal house model of Huu Bang. Photos: baovanhoa.vn