Passive Design Principles in the Transformation of Traditional Cham Muslim Villages in Mekong Delta

The Mekong Delta, famous for its status as a multi-ethnic region featuring many unique historical, cultural, and traditional villages, faces an imminent identity threat due to the ongoing urbanization process. Among them, the focus is on a small ethnic community, the Cham Muslim village, which still maintains many distinctive elements in terms of urban and architecture. In the previous investigations, fieldwork collected nine villages in this community that covered approximately two thousand housing, with attention devoted to the documentation of 151 traditional residences, forming the database for the framework of unique structures that have existed since the eighteenth century. In this study, the authors aim to clarify the relationship between the traditional spatial configuration and the surrounding environment and illustrate a transformation strategy grounded in passive architecture principles. We obtained results by analyzing village settlement and housing typology and its transformation through the viewpoint of passive design principles that follow the cultural behaviors of Cham Muslim people. The outcomes demonstrate the potential of preserving ethnic architecture while learning insights in adapting to the local climate. Furthermore, the research provides solutions for sustainable communities and contributes to the efforts to preserve ethnic identity for future generations.