Interview: Architect Tram-Anh Nguyen Talks Cultural Venues, Public Space, and Ephemerality

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Using rhythm and melody, Nguyen creates designs that flow.

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Oct 18, 2017 | Sara Nuta

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Architects use space to express an idea or feeling as musicians do with sound. Tram-Anh Nguyen is the architectural creative and founder of Impermanent Devices, an interdisciplinary design research platform informed by the teachings of buddhist philosophy. Similar to the intervals in a piece of music, Nguyen’s work focuses on the in-between. In the past, she has worked and collaborated with notable firms such as Rafael Viñoly Architects, SANAA Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa, and Philippe Rizzotti Architects.

Through the lens of impermanence, Nguyen uses the key concepts of temporality, materiality, mutability, and aesthetics to create her designs. What sets Nguyen and her designs apart is a unique emphasis on the humanity of buildings.

The Hanoi-native uses the fourth dimension, time, to design architecture that fosters relationships and emotional experiences. However, she also focuses on creating flexible, multi-functional spaces that can adapt to change for the future, while engaging users in the present.

Nguyen’s research and designs are concerned with creating vibrant public spaces that are open and inviting. She is currently working on BHD Cineplex, a movie theatre in the dense urban center of Hanoi, Vietnam. We sat down with Nguyen to find out more about the intersections of architectural design, cultural venues, and music.

You’ve worked and collaborated on cultural projects such as The New Cyprus Museum and The Bronx River Art Center. How do you design a space meant for the arts in a way that fosters creativity?

I’ve had the chance to work on several cultural projects in the past. My focus in designing cultural venues is to maximize the possibility for adaptation and flexibility of use.

Prior to the New Cyprus Museum, I worked on an invitation-only competition at Rafael Viñoly Architects to design The Factory, a flexible performing arts center located in Manchester, UK. The building design is a transformable black box theatre with operable walls that allow for a more fluid relationship with the St. John’s neighborhood in Manchester. The walls pivot out, moved by hydraulic actuators, and a scissor mechanism transforms the surface of the wall into a seating area. The building is designed to allow for a multitude of different uses.

The New Cyprus Museum was also an international architecture competition to design a archeological museum, a laboratory, a Department of Antiquities, Artifact storage, parking, and common facilities. Together with Of Possible Architectures and other collaborators, we have imagined a museum design that recreates the excitement and sense of wonder behind the find, enabling visitors to experience a culture that preceded and informed their own. Designed as an open space and walkable landscape, the museum campus is an extension of its adjacent public park. The gallery building forms a vessel within which the permanent and periodic exhibition spaces can be experienced in contemplation.

The Bronx River Art Center’s reception desk is an ongoing project for which we are currently developing a prototype. The design is meant to be moveable and adaptable, allowing a flexible choice for curators to integrate the desk in any location of the building.

Your work is influenced by teachings of buddhist philosophy as you incorporate ideas of temporality, materiality, mutability, and aesthetics into your designs. In what ways is the notion of ephemerality connected to art or music in general?

With regard to Impermanence, art is art, whether visual, auditory, literary, or otherwise in that it conveys ephemeral emotions from an object that may be concrete. A sound is emitted from an instrument and is absorbed into it environs. An image is conveyed from a canvas, and ripples through the mind. There's something about this transition, the passage of these emotions, sounds, and images that fascinates me. Through the lens of Impermanence, we are all ephemeral and I try to translate this into my design process.

If I can compare architecture to a music partition, my interest is to study the interval, the transition, the in-between. What makes an interval, is the in-between that constitutes a moment of the living that offers itself much more than at the beginning or the end of an event. In music in particular, a melodic interval is the distance between two sounds. This elusive fragility will attract more and more attention than the on the string of an instrument. Architecture, Art and Music are succession of ephemeral moments that created to provoke emotional experience.

How does collaborating with a team influence your creative process?

I have collaborated with design teams in the US, Europe, and Asia, sometimes virtually and sometimes in a design office. No matter the location or method, the objective is to leverage each team member’s unique expertise to respond to design challenges in a way that’s much more dynamic than we could achieve individually.

The BHD Cineplex you worked on is designed to serve as both a cultural venue and a meeting place, rather than just a traditional movie theatre. How could a music venue benefit from being viewed as a cultural center?

BHD Cineplex is designed to offer a variety of experiences for visitors of all types. The lobby will be transformed into a living room like space for the surrounding city. Part of the building will serve as a cultural center which can also be utilized as a music venue and adaptable to multiple uses. The building as a whole is designed to feel open and inviting, to encourage visitors to linger, socialize, and discuss the movies that they’ve just watched.

Architecture uses space to express an idea or feeling as music does with sound. When preparing an architectural rendering, do you consider yourself a performer?

Architectural renderings are composed of layers of images that help to create an atmosphere, an environment to provoke imagination and emotion. It’s one of other ways to manifest ideas and its potential implementation. With the current VR, physical, digital, parametric design tools that are available today, architects have a great number of possible medium for expression. I would consider myself as a performer if I can engage my audience and transform their perception.

What is the importance of having cultural centers and arts venues in cities?

In every city in the world, cultural centers and arts venues are essential to showcased contemporary talents but it’s also place meant to foster cultural exchange. As an architectural designer, cultural center and arts venues are part of my favorite design assignment.

How is our understanding of urban public space informed by music and art?

Music can be designed to be enjoyed in solitude, or to bring people together, and this is equally applicable to any architectural design. With public spaces, we utilize rhythm, melody, textures, and silence to create a flow, to encourage social exchange, and elicit emotion. When we create a vibrant public space, the objective is not only utilitarian, but also aesthetic.

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