This final fourth-year studio, directed by visiting professor and co-founder of ARB Architects Nguyễn Hà from Vietnam, aimed to develop a program to preserve the heritage of the Mang Thit brick-making village that residents and admirers have historically referred to as the “Red Kingdom.”

This specific program is a semipermanent residency and market space for the emerging generation of Mang Thit artisans. Residents will experience daily life around the agriculture that originally brought their families to this region in Vietnam.

As the kilns are no longer in use, local artists are finding success exploring new processes, such as unfired bricks or delicate, small scale pottery and ceramics. This space is catered to these growing artists, for their work to be put on display for tourists and community members in the warehouse. The garden house market is meant to encourage a blooming sense of cultural pride in a new generations of brick artists through using a site that is familiar to their history while also incorporating their own interpretation of their “Red Kingdom.”

Designed in Rhinoceros 7, Enscape, & Adobe Illustrator with studio partner Acacia Uechi