About us

2 About us

MAI Hung Trung // Atelier M32, FR

Paris based architect, founder of atelier M32 and initiator of Hanoi Ad Hoc. Trung has always been fascinated by urban chaos and banalities that he considered as indispensable catalysts intriguing fundamental urban changes. His works focus on devising urban renewal strategies for post-industrial contexts and defining modern vernacular architecture and urban patterns. His investigations fields range from rural villages in Vietnam to European shrinking cities and hinterlands. Trung is the recipient and nominee of numerous international awards and competitions including Europan 15 / Productive City 2, World Architectural Festival 2018, Ashui Awards 2020 and 2018, Spec GoGreen 2017, ASA International Competition 2015 Density/dense city. In 2018, Trung was selected by the Vietnamese government as one of the hundred young pioneers and a member of the Vietnam Innovation Network.

Prof.Christina SCHWENKEL // University of California, Riverside, US

Christina SCHWENKEL is Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside and former Director of the Program in Southeast Asian Studies (SEATRiP). She is co-editor of the Journal of Vietnamese Studies and author of the recent book, Building Socialism: The Afterlife of East German Architecture in Urban Vietnam (Duke University Press, 2020). Christina has conducted extensive ethnographic research in Vietnam on global technology transfers and postwar reconstruction of urban infrastructure. Her first book, The American War in Contemporary Vietnam: Transnational Remembrance and Representation (Indiana UNiversity Press 2009), examines historical knowledge production and the geopolitics of commemoration. Her more recent publications have focused on Cold War technopolitics and socialist circulations of urban planning knowledge and architectural models between Vietnam and East.

Prof. Sylvie FANCHETTE // Director of Research at IRD (Institut de Recherche pour le Développement ), FR

PhD in Geography from Paris 8 University and is authorised to supervise research. She has been conducting research at IRD since 1993 and is a member of UMR Ceped. Her main research interests are the urbanisation process in densely populated rural areas and the conditions of population densification in the Nile and Red River Deltas. In Vietnam, she studies rural industrialisation and the peri-urbanisation process in the context of the Vietnamese capital’s metropolisation. She is the author of “ Hanoi, a metropolis in the making” and “Discovering craft villages in Vietnam.

Duc LE // CO-NX, Oxford Brookes University, UK

Duc is a practicing architect and independent researcher in London. Graduated from the Manchester School of Architecture and the Architectural Association (AA), Duc has been involved with a wide range of architectural projects in Vietnam, Russia and the United Kingdom. He is also an Associate Lecturer and Unit Design Master at Oxford Brookes University. Duc has previously served as Course tutor at Architectural Association Visiting School Tropicality 2016, as Visiting critic at Leicester School University, the AA and as a contributor to Plakat research platform. Duc engages architecture through both practice and theory. Duc is currently interested in historiography and the critique of Vietnamese Architectural modernism in the 20th century.

Emmanuel CERISE // Director PRX Vietnam // Architect and urban planner

He has been working in Hanoi since 2012, as director of the cooperation program between Ile-de-France region (Paris Region) and Hanoi people’s committee (PRX-Vietnam). This program is a technical assistance to different technical departments of Hanoi as Hanoi urban planning institute, Hanoi department of tourism, Hoan Kiem District, as well as Hanoi department of environment, or department of planning and investment. He organizes training sessions about green planning, environmental planning, urban renewal, heritage preservation, waste and water management… He assists technical departments for satellite and eco towns planning, heritage survey, public space design, environmental policy audit… In parallel to his work, he is involved in academic teaching and researching. He is researcher associated with IPRAUS (Paris Research Institute: Architectures, Urbanism, Society, AUSser n°3329 CNRS), and participates in teaching and workshops with Paris-Belleville school of Architecture and Hanoi University of Architecture.

Danielle LABBÉ // Université de Montréal Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Urbanization in the Global South

Danielle Labbé is a trained architect and Associate Professor of urban planning at the Université de Montréal (Canada) where she holds the Canada Research Chair in Sustainable Urbanization in the Global South. Her research focuses on the inter-relations between the production and appropriation of urban space in Hanoi. She uses a combination of historical, process-oriented, and social agency perspectives to explore the encounters between state intentions, governing practices, and everyday life during the urbanization process. While primarily focused on Vietnam, her research contributes to theoretical debates about state-society relations, urban governance, and regulatory informality in the fields of urban planning, human geography, and urban anthropology.

In collaboration with

Elise LUONG // Undecided Productions / Artistic Consultant

Elise Luong was born in Australia and has been based in Hanoi since 2016. After graduating from a BFA in Photography and Video Arts in Belgium, she worked in a diverse range of Contemporary Art fields, engaging in project management and the curation of wildly unique spaces in Brussels, Berlin, and Montreal, showcasing visual, street art & new media. In 2012, when based in Brussels, she co-founded the not-forprofit organisation called Undecided Productions widening her scope of curatorial practice to highlight “experience-based” forms such as performance, contemporary dance, live/experimental music & sound installation. Since moving to Vietnam, Undecided Productions has focused on projects that foster cultural exchange in the arts, such as directing the residency program called live.make.share. She currently works in the fields not only of Contemporary Art but also Architecture and journalism, as a writer, editor, events manager, program curator and communication designer. As an artist manager she is concerned with the development of production & dissemination opportunities for young creators and for the Hanoi Ad Hoc project she will contribute with a reflection on art as industry and labour as product.

Francesco MONTRESOR // Architect / Hanoi team project leader

Francesco is a Hanoi-based architect with focus interests being space, body, and territory. Having first arrived in Vietnam in 2004, Francesco is currently a Senior Architect at G8A Architects where he has been employed since 2017. In parallel to his work as a designer, he has contributed and led research teams focusing on public housing problematics in South-East Asia in general, and Hanoi in particular. Graduate from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédéral de Lausanne (Switzerland, 2016) with the thesis entitled “Red River Delta; A Two Speed Productive Territory”. He studied the mechanisms of industrialisation and urbanisation in the Red River Delta (Vietnam), later developing it into an urban vision for the development of Hanoi and its surrounds. Francesco nourishes his professional experience by participating in workshops, residencies, training and MOOCs on topics often related to urban conditions in South-East Asia.

PHAM Hong Viet & BUI Phuong Ngoc // GA6 Workshop, National University of Civil Engineering, VN

Viet graduated from Politecnico di Milano (Italy, 2017) in Urban Planning and Policy Design. After coming back to Vietnam in 2017, he has been involved in urban planning and design consulting at architectural firms such as AVANT, 1+1>2. His recent focuses are on urban design, human ecology system in planning and architecture - interconnected spaces in which people are the central nucleus. Before completing the Master of Science program in Architecture and Preservation at Politecnico di Milano - Italy, Ngoc has participated in practice and research in Vietnam, Italy and the US. Her architectural practise and research focus on high-density urban design and preservation design towards a sustainable future. She craves to rediscover how humans understand their existence from heritage and deal with the environment we inhabit through built spaces. Currently, they are working at National University of Civil Engineering as a lecturer and a specialist; and co-founded the GA6 Workshop with other partners in 2020.

Federica Natalia ROSATI

Federica Natalia is a PhD candidate at Université Libre de Bruxelles and Université de Liège, where she is investigating over the access of water and sanitation services in the urban South. She holds a Master in Architecture at Ferrara University and a Master in International Cooperation at the Italian Institute for International Political Studies (ISPI) in Milan. Her main interests span from urban regeneration to co-production of basic services (water, sanitation and housing) especially in informal settlements and peri-urban areas, with focus on community participation in planning processes.

Thomas LACOUR-VEYRANNE // Architect and Urban planner

Since 2016, Thomas works as a professional architect & urban planner. He is developing his skills in the design of public spaces. His recent assignments in the Middle East (Bahrain, UAE, KSA) and Asia (India, Vietnam, Cambodia), have enabled him to take up the challenge of planning and designing sustainable cities in regions with a constrained climate and rapid large-scale growth. Based on these experiences, he has been able to develop a multidisciplinary and holistic vision of urban scales, from the metropolitan territory to building scale. Interested in different typologies of architecture, traditional or contemporary, he tries to discern the steps of their creative process, always seeking to gain an insight into the world cultures and populations he is still learning to discover.

Project Staff

Hanoi Team Phong PHUONG ,Quan DAO,Ha NGUYEN,The Hiep NGUYEN, Tuan HA

Paris Team / atelier M32 Uyen LUONG, Lan VI, Tuan Dung NGUYEN, Floralou LECLAIR, Thomas LACOUR, Magdalena SMOTER

Japan Team Tung NGUYEN, Kyohei TAKAHASHI

Singapore Team Thien Tam TRAN

US Team Phuong Anh NGUYEN

UK Team Vang Anh TRAN