March 27, 2025 Interior Architecture Welcomes Vietnam’s Nguyễn Hà as Visiting Professor

Nguyễn Hà, co-founder of Hanoi-based practice Arb Architects, joins the School of Interior Architecture faculty for the spring semester as the program’s first visiting professor from Vietnam. She has recently been recognized as the first Vietnamese recipient of the 2024 Moira Gemmill Prize for Emerging Architecture, part of the W Awards, for her design of the Đạo Mẫu Museum and Temple in Hanoi, Vietnam.

Despite her success, Hà’s priority of creating a space that evokes serenity and collaboration with artisans has resulted in the rejection of many of her designs.

“When you can really connect with something very universally, you need silence,” she said. “When you reach serenity inside yourself, it means you are enlightened. Serenity doesn’t have to mean paradise or church. It can be in any place around you.”

The Đạo Mẫu Museum and Temple, completed in 2023, was Hà’s second completed project. It’s exterior features clay roof tiles around the 5,000 m² surface, collected from hundreds of old houses. Hà and her colleagues constructed buildings around the grounds and existing structures in an effort to preserve harmony.

In addition to the museum and temple, Hà’s design for the Concon House, a 20-room hotel in Hanoi, marked the first major built project of the practice. Designed by ARB architects and completed in 2022, the hotel reinterprets Hanoi’s vernacular architecture, offering an alternative approach to the city’s rapid vertical growth. The seven-floor structure draws from the traditional “Tube House” typology, projecting sequences of mass and voids vertically to optimize space, natural light, and ventilation.

Designed to reflect the city’s layered social history, it blends tranquility with the energy of the surrounding streets, inviting guests to experience Hanoi as both an observer and participant in its vibrant life.

Assistant Professor Hojung Kim was first introduced to Hà following a stay at the hotel in late 2023, while traveling through Vietnam pursuing research.

“I was impressed by the hotel’s unique typology and how its design was intentionally integrated with the surrounding urban context,” he said. “Immediately, I reached out to the architect to learn more about her practice and explore potential future collaborations. Despite it being our first time meeting, we connected well and had an engaging conversation about craft, industrialization in Vietnam, and globalization.”

A month later, Kim, along with other school faculty, brought interior architecture students to meet Hà at Arb Architects as a part of the program’s Indochina travel abroad opportunity. Shortly after returning to the US, School Director Milagros Zingoni Phielipp approached Hà about being the program’s next visiting professor.

While at UT, Hà is leading studios for second-and fourth-year interior architecture students. She is introducing Vols to her projects in Vietnam including Concon House and a restoration project in villages in the South of Vietnam.

“These projects provide students a better understanding of the way I approach architecture,” Hà said. “I look at the field in a very large context of the urban fabrics of a country and history. The projects I’ve brought allows students to work on the very large scale of the urban, then the architecture and interiors.”