Huế was formerly the royal capital of the Nguyen Dynasty of Vietnam. The present city was founded at the beginning of the nineteenth century, but the city is built on an ancient fort and port of what was once one of the principal cities of Champa.
Huế
Projects
Project - Field Report
William Ma
Explore
Histories of Huế have focused on the citadel and the Nguyễn dynasty. Here, the Huế team approach the city from its rear gates, following the Perfume River through lesser-known sites and looking at space through multiple cultural lenses to reconsider narratives of the city through the theme of ‘nature’.
The team offer many ways to approach Huế’s layered stories. You might begin at a distance by acquainting yourself with the river villages or choose to immerse yourself immediately with an intimate tour of Hải Cát Village. Or you could decide to follow the idealistic vistas of historical imagery, taking in the twenty views of Emperor Thiệu Trị through poetry and prints, unpacking colonial dreamscapes or working back from the present through contemporary portraits. Whichever way you wander, the team’s maps, studies of artworks and photographs, and archival research provide a rich and overlaid story of a city at once sacred, historic, and shaped by its landscape.
Explore all the materials, projects, and conversations collected by the Site and Space Huế team, which shed light on the city's past and present.
Team
Ylan Vo
Landscape Architect and Researcher, St. Louis, MO
Ylan Vo is a designer and researcher focused on strategies that integrate social and economic development with sustainable natural systems management. Her recent investigations concern the role of natural systems and environmental discourse in post-conflict and militarised landscapes. This research spans a range of sites impacted by Agent Orange from the Vietnam War, as well as more broadly the global spatial practices of U.S. security and militarisation including tactical environmental modification, preservation, and territorial expansion. Ylan earned her Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture degrees from Washington University in St. Louis. She also holds a BA in History of Art and Architecture from Brown University, where she served on the planning committee of the international conference Better World by Design. Ylan has previously worked in design-thinking education and outreach at Washington University, St. Louis Artworks, and The Nature Conservancy. She currently works as a landscape and urban designer at Forum Studio in St. Louis.
William Ma
Assistant Professor, Louisiana State University, Louisiana
William Ma is the assistant professor of Asian Art History in the College of Art and Design at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge. He received his BA and PhD in the history of art from the University of California at Berkeley. He specialises in the artistic exchange between China and Europe through the lens of Jesuit missions. His research interest includes material culture, workshop practices, aesthetic pedagogy, Jesuit missionary art in late imperial China, and the relationship between export art and the imperial court during the High Qing. In addition to LSU, he has taught courses in Asian art history, urbanism and the arts, Buddhist art, at the University of San Francisco, Lewis and Clark College, and his alma mater. A former Mellon Curatorial Fellow at the Peabody Essex Museum, Ma has worked at the Las Vegas Art Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim-Hermitage Museum.
Caroline Herbelin
Field Director (Hue), Site and Space Assistant Professor, History, University of Toulouse, France
Caroline Herbelin holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the Sorbonne University, Paris. She has been teaching at the University of Toulouse as an Assistant professor since 2011. Her book Architectures du Vietnam Colonial was published in France by INHA/CTHS in 2016. In it, she examines the diversity of cultural exchanges embodied in the built environment thereby moving beyond analyses equating architecture with colonial power. She especially focuses on the way the Vietnamese appropriated and created the build environment during the colonial period. She is currently working on a social history of art in colonial Vietnam, focusing on the history of private collections, exhibitions, and art institutions as well as exploring the way arts and handicrafts were used and framed in colonial policies. She has co-edited a collection of essays on Vietnamese art and a catalogue about French Indochina for an exhibition held in 2013 at the Musée de l’armée in Paris. She has published several articles and book chapters on art and architecture in Vietnam and colonial culture.
Đỗ Tường Linh
Curator and Artistic Director, Six Space, Hanoi
Đỗ Tường Linh pursued her BA in Art History and Art Criticism at Vietnam University of Fine Art and her MA in Contemporary Art and Art Theory of Asia and Africa at SOAS in London. Her research and curatorial practice ranges from art and politics, conceptualism and post-colonial studies. She has engaged in the art scene in Vietnam since 2005 and worked and collaborated with important galleries, art spaces, institutions and projects such as Art Vietnam gallery, Dong Son Today Art Foundation, Nha San studio, Hanoi Doclab and the Goethe Institute. Linh is currently the artistic director and co-founder of Sixspace (sixspace.vn), an independent platform for art, education and community projects in Hanoi and a member of SEA currents, a network/ platform for Southeast Asian Art in London
https://seacurrents.org/
Phi Nguyen
Architect and Researcher, Ho Chi Minh City
Phi Nguyen is an architect/ researcher practicing in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. She holds a Master in Architecture degree from Harvard University, Graduate School of Design (GSD) and a Bachelor degree (summa cum laude) from Berea College in the USA. Phi has experience working in both art/design practice and research from renown firms and institutions such as the Harvard Art Museums (Boston, U.S.A), Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum (New York, U.S.A.), Kengo Kuma and Associates (Tokyo, Japan), GUNDPartnership (Boston) and the Archeological Exploration of Sardis Program (Sardis, Turkey). Her research interests lie in the preservation of architecture as cultural heritage and collective identity through both traditional and contemporary design lenses. Phi is currently organising a multi-media exhibition on the neglected architectural sites of Hue City. She chaired the paper session “Architectural Preservation in Asia” at the Society of Architectural Historians’ 71st Annual International Conference in St. Paul, USA in 2018.
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