In 2015, I wrote an essay, nay, a love letter to Sài Gòn. The essay discusses what first inculcated in me a love for buildings and urban design: Neoclassical architecture. The style is almost synonymous with French Colonial architecture in Indochina, and as the name suggests, it boasts a sense of history and civility, beyond an imposing atmosphere inherent in the authoritarian nature of the Colonist government. I still remember being 15 and standing in front of the Opera House one evening; I kne…

In 2016, as I continued to be more involved in the historic preservation efforts in my hometown Sài Gòn, I went down a rabbit hole to find the origin of various art motifs that were neither completely Vietnamese nor completely French. These motifs were not known to be endemic to French colonial architecture that one may expect to find in Vietnam. This is when I realized Vietnam adopted Art Nouveau rather early and readily, which is amusing because not a lot of people have discussed this; we seem…

In the Winter of 2019, I had an opportunity to study with David (Dave) Miller from the Miller|Hull Partnership. Having great enthusiasm for Latin American architecture, Dave created this course based on his years of frequent travels to South America. The course was very loosely structured because there was so much to be discussed, be it vernacular architecture, public housing, world affairs, or international economics. The research topics to be conducted by students were also open-ended, which g…

Last year, I set out to do a research on a subcategory of Japanese homes called "9 tsubo house" under the guidance of the esteemed Ken Tadashi Oshima. In Japan, a tsubo is a useful measurement system that departs from the conventional, oftentimes rigid, metrics or units and instead utilizes the space equivalent of two tatami mats. This space is thought to be adequate for the body to perform the most essential task: sleep. If a tsubo means one person can sleep comfortably within its space, four t…