khairunnisa rahmaditia adita + ming hong jheng | 2025
saig-ins
this project reimagines the library as a living archive of performed knowledge, capturing everyday practices often overlooked by traditional institutions. It challenges the pressures of Saigon’s ‘overachieving disease’ by creating participatory spaces for learning, care, and curiosity beyond academics.
01. context
In Saigon, libraries remain quiet repositories of books, reinforcing specific ideas of success. Everyday practices like cooking, dancing, painting, and color-making are left out, while students face intense social pressures to ‘overachieve’. The city’s cultural richness is sidelined, and spaces for shared, experimental learning are rare.The Saigins Project proposes a different kind of library—one that lives in the city, evolves with its people, and values everyday knowledge. It is built on three principles:Knowledge as performance: Learning through doing, sharing, and practicing.Care and community: Spaces that grow from dialogue and collective use.Time and change: Programs that adapt to flexible schedules, seasonal cycles, and temporary use.
02. the four sites
River School
30% ChangeThe River School is the lightest intervention, working with existing conditions rather than replacing them. Temporary platforms and small programs create moments of learning along the river’s edge. Change here is partial, about 30%, showing how even modest shifts in use and rhythm can invite curiosity and open new possibilities without disrupting the site.
After-School Facility
50% ChangeThe After-School Facility represents a more significant adjustment, reusing an existing structure but adapting it for flexible, participatory learning. About 50% of the space is transformed, keeping the familiar framework of schooling while creating new opportunities for dialogue, experimentation, and collective activities. It balances continuity with change.
Renewed City Square
80% ChangeThe Renewed City Square is a large-scale reimagining of public space, with around 80% of its character altered through cultural programming and design. The square becomes an active stage for performance, gathering, and exchange, showing how shared urban areas can be reshaped to prioritise openness, visibility, and collective identity.
Botanical Garden with Hydrology Lab
100% ChangeThe Botanical Garden and Hydrology Lab mark the most radical shift. A 100% transformation of a neglected river islet into a new environmental hub. Here, native plants, water research, and community programs completely redefine the site. It demonstrates how overlooked spaces can be fully reimagined, combining ecology and culture to create an entirely new urban future.
03. river school
04. after school facility
05. renewed city square
06. botanical garden x hydrology lab
07. archives
Cafe Apartment in Saigon was studied to experiment the overlapped technique of architectural drawings and informations. This drawing was featured in Melbourne Design Week 2025.
Additionally, the Infrastructure of Thu Thiem in Saigon was studied as part of understanding the urban layers and history of the city throughout the years.
the project relied on junk journal as part of the documentation for the 2 weeks excursion experience
Final Panel and Model (left) and 7 Part Documentation Booklet Package (right)
Recipient of the RMIT S1 2025 Master of Urban Design Award for Design Excellence. Photography: Tope Adesina
