Straw Pavilion, Ho Chi Minh City

The Rice Straw Pavilion in Ho Chi Minh City was built to host an architecture event. On the first visit to the site, the architects immediately felt the strong natural atmosphere of a lush, plant-filled garden, and the design set out to intensify that perception rather than compete with it. The chosen structure is one that can merge into its surroundings, characterized by blending, lightness, assimilation and permeability. These keywords led to an organic form, like a heap of rice straw placed in the garden. Rice straw is a memory image of the Vietnamese countryside; through this material the architects evoke shared memory and touch those who see it, while the straw itself can exist as a body fully absorbed into nature. The pavilion is meant to appear and disappear over time, without directly engaging the garden itself; in this most direct gesture, its insertion does not damage the existing surroundings but blends smoothly into them. The lead architect is Nguyen Hoang Manh, with concept design by Truong Nguyen Quoc Trung and Le Thanh Thuong. The resulting pavilion is a temporary, plant-like event space that speaks to rural memory through a humble, agrarian material, its porous form letting air, light and garden pass through it.