It’s not every day an altogether new university comes to fruition, but Boston firm Machado Silvetti was up to the monumental design task. A collaboration between bilateral education partners, the Vietnamese–German University is a sprawling campus in southern Vietnam, with a built area of 13 hectares and another 18 hectares planned. Buildings studded with small, square windows appear straight out of postwar Berlin yet sit comfortably in Vietnam’s landscape with generous green space and nods to the country’s exploding tech sector. A lecture hall wrapped in thin metal scrim and a diagonal pink staircase climbing the side of a building signal that the campus takes its architecture as seriously as its curriculum.
Team: Jeffry Burchard, Stephanie Randazzo Dwyer, Rodolfo Machado, Sophia Zelov, Seiee Kim (Machado Silvetti); Ministry of Education and Training of Vietnam (MOET); Hoang Giang Construction Consultant; Grant Associates; MCA Landscape Design Corporation; ARUP North America; National General Construction Consulting Joint Stock Company (NAGECCO); Turner Construction Company


