Duc Le, on daily basis, traces and marks a hundred years of modernist architecture in Vietnam. Caught in colonisation, wars and political conflicts throughout the 20th century, Vietnamese modernist architecture underwent endless cycles of transformation, demolition, and mutilation. The co-existence of multiple ideologies and agents resulted in grids of influence that score onto the architectural landscape, shaping its aesthetic and functional evolution, sometime gently, sometime violently. Unlike other regions with a dominant architectural narrative, Vietnam’s built environment during this period was a palimpsest of competing and overlapping forces.
This talk delves into the intricate and often overlooked complexities that have shaped Vietnamese architecture throughout the 20th century. By juxtaposing unofficial personal accounts, unloved archival records, alternative histories, myths, and local anecdotes, more comprehensive interpretations emerge that allow us to empathise with numerous entangled agents, whose faiths were often tragic and forgotten. The discussion will also examine the present condition of Vietnam’s neglected modernist heritage sites and touch on experimental preservation methods within Duc’s architectural practice, which aim to preserve their legacy while rediscovering Vietnamese architectural identity.
Organised by the Courtauld Student’s Union Architecture Society and Dr Robin Schuldenfrei, Katja and Nicolai Tangen Reader in 20th Century Modernism, The Courtauld.
Speaker:
Duc Le is an architect and director at CO-NX. Graduated from the Manchester School of Architecture and the Architectural Association (AA), Duc has worked extensively on architectural projects in the UK, Eastern Europe, and Vietnam, with a focus on heritage, adaptive reuse, and creative preservation. Duc has served as an associate lecturer and design unit master at the University of Greenwich (2021-2023) and Oxford Brookes University (2019-2020), and as a course tutor at the Architectural Association Visiting School (2016). He is also a regular visiting critic at many architecture schools in the UK and Vietnam.
Duc engages with architecture in both practice and theory, having previously contributed to the Plakat research platform and advised the Hanoi Ad Hoc initiative. He initiated the Grids of Vietnamese Modernism, a project focusing on the historiography and critique of Vietnamese architecture in the 20th century. Duc is currently a PhD candidate under the Practice Research Symposium programme at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University, a founding member of Gian Giua collective and a Co-Director at Architectural Association Visiting School Hanoi.
