Vo Trong Nghia: How to make our cities green
The Vietnamese architect Vo Trong Nghia designs radical buildings that bring nature into urban settings. He talks to Jonathan Glancey from the Chicago Architecture Biennial.
Vo Trong Nghia’s buildings set themselves against the idea of the city as a ‘concrete jungle’. He uses low-cost, sustainable materials and natural elements like water and plants to create a truly green urban environment.
The Farming Kindergarten that his studio designed in Dongnai outside Ho Chi Minh City caters for children of the workers at a nearby shoe factory. It features a distinctive green looping roof, on which children learn agricultural techniques in the gardens that cover it. The design for the administrative building of the FPT University in Hanoi features a chequerboard facade, in which concrete panels alternate with recessed green spaces.
Vo Trong Nghia says he wants “not only to make beautiful architecture. Architecture should be a device to connect people to nature”. He has a vision of a city in which every house is like a “mini-park” that comes together with those around it to create a whole city as one vast green space.
BBC Culture is a media partner of the Chicago Architecture Biennial, which runs from 3 October 2015 – 3 January 2016.
Throughout October and November we will look at the work of some of the world’s most exciting architects and examine how buildings shape our lives. Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest from Chicago.
