The project documents, digitizes, and analyzes the works of architect Thuận Tiến Nguyễn, an important figure in Vietnam’s post-war architectural landscape. As a member of the prominent yet understudied Xưởng Thiết Kế Thực Nghiệm [Experimental Design Studio], Nguyễn’s protean and nationalistic design shaped Vietnamese architecture in the 1980–90s through nation-building competitions and projects. His archive of drawings, sketches, and writings has remained unseen for four decades and is at risk of damage and loss. By cataloguing and studying these materials, the project establishes the first comprehensive record of his work and situates it within the under-researched field of Vietnamese modernist architecture. It also creates a framework for documenting Nguyễn’s built works through photogrammetry and film, at a moment when modernist buildings are constantly being razed for market development. The study frames his architecture as a lens for understanding Vietnam’s nation-building years and the intersection of architecture, politics, and cultural identity.

Duc Le is principal architect at CO-NX and lead researcher of the Grids of Vietnamese Modernism initiative. A graduate of the Manchester School of Architecture and the Architectural Association (AA), he is a PhD candidate at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) Practice Research Symposium. His professional work spans the United Kingdom, Eastern Europe, and Vietnam, with a strong focus on heritage, adaptive reuse, and creative preservation. Le has taught as associate lecturer at the University of Greenwich and Oxford Brookes University, and is director of the AA Visiting School Pixel Preservation. He has contributed to the Plakat research platform, advised on the Hanoi Ad Hoc initiative, and founded Grids of Vietnamese Modernism, a non-linear project of historiography, critique, and advocacy for the preservation of overlooked twentieth-century Vietnamese architecture. He is also a founding member of the Gian Giua Collective, a platform for architectural discourse in Vietnam.