It's Trần Thị Ngụ Ngôn, co-founder of Tropical Space in Vietnam
Winner of Second DIVIA Award Announced
As co-founder of Tropical Space in Ho Chi Minh City, Trần Thị Ngụ Ngôn designs residential, commercial, and cultural projects with a deep response to the tropical climate of Vietnam and an embrace of traditional materials and techniques. She has been named the winner of the DIVIA Award 2025.
The announcement of the winner took place in a ceremony held in Venice on Saturday, May 10, at Palazzo Mora, in the context of the European Cultural Center's Time Space Existence exhibition. Fittingly, the ceremony happened in a large gallery with a display of the six DIVIA finalists on one wall, opposite a collage of images from Marta Maccaglia, the winner of the inaugural DIVIA Award, in 2023. Most of the finalists for the second award were in attendance: Patcharada Inplang from Thailand, Izaskun Chinchilla from Spain, Carolina Rodas and Carla Chávez from Ecuador, Cazú Zegers from Chile, and of course Trần Thị Ngụ Ngôn from Vietnam.
Unfortunately, as DIVIA founder Ursula Schwitalla informed the crowd, Mexican architect Surella Segú, who is teaching in the United States, did not travel to Venice due to concerns over being able to re-enter the country given the current immigration policies of the US government and its antagonism toward higher education—a situation Schwitalla criticized in her remarks. Regardless of Segú's omission, spirits were high when the finalists stood in front of the audience and jury chair Martha Thorne revealed Trần Thị Ngụ Ngôn as the winner.
The ceremony also celebrated the release of a catalog for the second DIVIA Award, published by Hatje Cantz. The 92-page hardcover book features in-depth conversations between managing editor Veronika Lukashevich and the finalists, presentations of important projects by the firms, and comments from Schwitalla, Eduard Koegel, and Thorne, who was accompanied by Sol Camancho, Rahul Mehrotra, and Itohan Osayimwese on the jury. Koegel, an architectural historian and the curator of our Chinese-Architects platform, is also one of the nomination experts for DIVIA, so in his preface he illuminates how “nominators for the geographical regions have the responsibility to find individuals whose work not only has an exemplary character in the regional context but can provide global impulses for architectural strategies.” Given his role as nomination expert for Asia, we can thank Koegel for bringing the work of Trần Thị Ngụ Ngôn to wider attention via this award.
The jury statement in the catalog describes the work of Trần Thị Ngụ Ngôn and Tropical Space, the firm she founded with her husband in 2011, as “defined by clarity and coherence; it does not seek to be iconic for the sake of recognition but rather strives for a meaningful articulation of place.” Furthermore, Tropical Space “takes ubiquitous, business-as-usual programs and recontextualizes them through spatial innovation—driven by a deep response to the tropical climate.”
Such characterizations are evident in Premier Office, an office building on a quiet street in Ho Chi Minh City that we featured a couple years ago. A porous “brick curtain” and movable panels in front of sliding glass doors help shade the interior and provide natural ventilation for the rental occupants. It is an approach rooted in traditional materials and techniques but with a wholly contemporary expression. “By positioning Tropical Space within the architectural mainstream in Asia while subtly shifting its boundaries,” the jury statement says further, “Trần Thị Ngụ Ngôn sets new models for the spatial practice, shaping a forward-looking vision for the future.”
World-Architects spoke with Trần Thị Ngụ Ngôn and Hung Thanh (architect and project manager at Tropical Space and translator in Venice) before the award, asking her about her thoughts on DIVIA and what it would mean to her, both personally and professionally, if she won. Joking that it felt like a Miss Universe question, she expressed her respect for the award but admitted she had not thought much about it after the hard work of preparing the award submission, much less about winning it. Trần Thị Ngụ Ngôn then said she would be happy if she won not only because she respects the award, but because she comes from a small country whose architecture few people know about: “I think it would be good not only for me and the other female architects in Vietnam, but for female architects around the world, inspiring them to work hard, love, and have a stronger passion in this job and in this industry.”
Look for our interview in the coming weeks. In the meantime, congratulation to Trần Thị Ngụ Ngôn on winning the DIVIA Award 2025!