Nguyễn Hà is a practising architect, researcher, and educator based in Vietnam. She is the founder of arb architects and co-founder of Material Matters Research Lab (MM Lab).
Her work grows from specific local contexts, engaging material cultures, craft traditions, and both tangible and intangible situated knowledge. She describes her approach as Situated Serenity, understanding architecture not as a finished object but as a lived condition shaped through local craft, community, time, and enduring relationships between people and place. Here, serenity refers both to a deliberate spatial atmosphere and to a working discipline of slowness and attentiveness, allowing architecture to emerge through process and situated knowledge, with a capacity to remain with uncertainty. Her projects often begin with what is overlooked - existing structures, local materials, and practices at risk of disappearance.
This body of work was recognised with the AR Emerging Awards 2025, awarded for the overall trajectory of arb architects rather than a single project, and noted for its humane, craft-driven approach with relevance beyond Vietnam. In 2024, Nguyễn Hà received the Moira Gemmill Prize, recognising her ability to identify what is often unseen and to work with “projects that are not yet projects.”
Alongside practice, she is a recipient of a Graham Foundation Grant and an Experimental Fellowship with Bauhaus Earth (with Kim Hojung). Both are developed as research projects within MM Lab, where research, experimentation, and practice are pursued as a continuous trajectory. In 2025, she was invited as Visiting Professor at the University of Tennessee.
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