PHONG CACH MOI SAIGON (NEW STYLE SAIGON): TAILORING SAIGON’S FASHION LABORATORY

Abstract

New Style Saigon Laboratory, a clothing/fashion production, is a place to make, fosters businesses and learning, while celebrating Vietnamese trades, beauty, and pride. The crafts of cloth-making and is a business that gain Vietnam economic significance globally, as well as preserving the respect of traditional clothing. For example, the Ao Dai is a cultural object – a hand-made apparel made using local textiles and dyes, and its light materiality cools the body in Vietnam’s humid climate. Generative of the Vietnamese dress, the architecture integrates the contextual phenomena and narrates clothing as a metaphor to form spaces. The building block along this street is atmospherically charged, intensified with light jagged balconies, sectional occupation, and program density taking place in tropical Vietnamese climate. The design of New Style Saigon intends to embody this atmosphere of ground fluidity, vertical program, and liveliness of the common. The project uses the metaphor of clothing such as folding, fitting, and draping for programs and circulation, and building envelope.