The Humanity of Brick

Louis Kahn may have asked the humble brick what it wanted, but Trân Thį Ngu Ngôn made it a poet. The work of the Vietnamese architect can be described as an extended meditation on the building material. In a lecture hosted by Cornell AAP, Ngôn presented the work of her office, Tropical Space, which is mostly composed of brick screens and walls layered and manipulated to function in Vietnam’s tropical climate. Ngôn explicitly tied her office’s work to materials, craft, textiles, culture, community, and the environment. The brick buildings that emerge from this sensitivity are soft, breathing, flexible structures that respond and listen to their occupants and surroundings. The architect closed the lecture with an apt analogy: “We make the first layer by weaving clothing outside our skin. The next layer is the house, which we also make by weaving a single material. The next layer is nature—with wind, sunlight, views. We bring this to the inside and let the house breathe.”