DESIGNED FOR SERENITY WITH NATURE IN MIND

- Vo Trong Nghia
The article talks about architect Vo Trong Nghia’s work, who is based in Ho Chi Minh City
through his efforts to create a new language of architecture in Vietnam. Mr. Nghia lives a
soulful life, he started practicing meditation since 2012 and has spent most of his time for the
last two years in a Buddhist monastery in Myanmar. He now practices in calls and discusses
work for short periods of time.
All the members of his firm meditate for at least two hours a day and are made to follow
strict habits of refraining from drinking alcohol, smoking and lying, he believes meditating
for several hours can help one attain superhuman mental capabilities. To him, architecture
becomes easy after he meditates, he describes that meditation has helped him in concentrating
in a particular job and that with an empty mind after meditation, he can come up with a
concept every five to ten minutes.
As the cities Vietnam have such small number of parks and greenery his firm Vo Trong
Nghia Architects mainly focusses on connecting people to nature.
Mr. Nghia contemplates on his love for nature and his childhood, he says that he was born
poor in a village in the North-South border of Vietnam which experienced war most of the
time, so the area was deprived of the modern techniques of architecture. He says that as an
architect he wanted to provide that by building in harmony with the nature and that used
simple and cheap materials, he wants to use trees not just as decorative elements but as
entities that actually interact with the building, to limit water and flooding, to filter the sun, to
filter sounds, to improve high density living. He emphasizes on his affection for vernacular
architecture and his willingness to develop a new kind of architecture by combining it, to
solve the modern problems of high density living.
When asked about success he said that he would prefer enlightenment over fame.
RESPONSE:

‘India is rapidly urbanizing. According to the 2011 Census, the urban population grew to
377.1 million as compared to 286.1 million in 2001 census showing a growth of 2.76 percent
per annum during 2001-2011. The level of urbanization in the country as a whole increased
from 25.7 percent in 1991 to 27.82 percent in 2001 and to 31.14 percent in 2011 – an increase
of 3.3 percentage points during 2001-2011 compared to an increase of 2.1 percentage points
during 1991-2001.’
Mr. Vo Trong Nghia talks about solving the problem of high-density housing by combining
vernacular and modern techniques, which I feel so is every architect’s challenge in the
modern age and we should be up for it. He talks about providing housing and buildings which
would stay upright for a 100 years and talks about price as a secondary parameter over the
use of appropriate materials be it cost effective or not, however the fact is that price is going
to be the main factor for the eventual users, he hopes to cut down the pricing of HVACs by
providing passive methods by installing trees which acts as living entities of the building
itself. If we are taking about individual dwellings, a simple balcony itself becomes a luxury,
which he solves via vertical gardening techniques, however what about the maintenance of
these plants, who would actually have the time to actually maintain it themselves; gardening
is supposedly a hobby and not everyone shares it.
Mr. Nghia focusses a lot on affordable housing his S-House series of prefab housing modules
are great examples, but they do lack all the characteristic features that he is known for with
structure piercing trees and trees used for ventilation purposes and they attain to the rural
mass. In the article the speaker talks about choosing enlightenment over fame, yet the ideal of
his firm remains to build a language for the cities of Vietnam contradicting his own words.