Designing the future by honouring the “everyday”

Tiếng Việt

Designing the future by honouring the “everyday”

In Ho Chi Minh City, rapid growth often overshadows the ordinary spaces where real life happens.

Dr Andrew Stiff, Senior Lecturer in Design Studies at RMIT Vietnam, is challenging that through the River Cities Network – a global project reimagining how rivers and urban life intersect through creative practice.

Alt Text is not present for this image, Taking dc:title 'river-cities-network-1'

In Ho Chi Minh City, everyday life quietly unfolds behind the city's rapid rise. (Photo: Andrew Stiff)

The River Cities Network (RCN) is a multi-sited global initiative to pursue research on the interrelationship between cities and their rivers and waterways. In Vietnam, the research centres on the Te Canal, using creative practice, from film and sound to VR and archival storytelling, to document and reimagine this often-overlooked space. The goal is to make visible the everyday urban heritage that city planning often neglects.

A richer reading of the city

Most heritage efforts in Vietnam focus on temples, pagodas, or colonial villas. “Traditional heritage, heritage of the past, is well acknowledged,” Dr Stiff explained. “But Ho Chi Minh City has struggled to define its identity beyond being an economic engine.” His work drew attention to a different type of heritage: the everyday, sensory-rich spaces where urban life actually happens.

The Te Canal (known as Kenh Te locally), which divides Districts 4 and 7, once supported a floating market and still hums with informal trade. “This area offers insight into what we might call the heritage of the future,” Dr Stiff said. “It’s not about monuments, but about lived experience, cultural rhythms, and relationships with the environment.”

These are the textures that give the city character – the smell of street food, the sound of karaoke at dusk, the way infrastructure yields to water during full moons. “We all love to hate karaoke,” Dr Stiff joked, “But how quiet did the city feel during the lockdown without bike horns and karaoke? These aren’t nuisances, they’re the soul of the city.”

Alt Text is not present for this image, Taking dc:title 'river-cities-network-2'

Street food scents, dusk karaoke and moonlit floods, these textures are the soul of Ho Chi Minh City. (Photo: Andrew Stiff)

Rather than clinging to nostalgia or wiping the slate clean, the River Cities Network advocates for thoughtful redevelopment. “There’s a danger in pastiche, but also in high-rise erasure,” he said. “We need cities that evolve but remain distinctly Vietnamese.”

This means planning that embraces informality, such as the remaining traders along Tran Xuan Soan street, and supports community life without displacing it. It also means acknowledging the canal not as a constraint but as a cohabitant of the city. “When the tide rises and the street floods, it’s not failure,” Dr Stiff said. “It’s an ongoing negotiation between nature and infrastructure.”

Creative practice as urban insight

Unlike traditional urban studies, Dr Stiff approaches the city through a designer’s lens. His work uses creative tools like moving image, AR, and sound design to document spaces and provoke new ways of seeing them. “Creative documentation doesn’t just record, it reconfigures how we understand place,” he said.

The River Cities Archive, developed through this research, is a growing digital collection of stories, visuals, and sensory data. For policymakers and developers, it’s a resource to build more culturally sensitive planning. For residents, it’s a platform to see their daily lives reflected as meaningful and worth protecting.

Dr Stiff is also helping shape future designers through education. At RMIT Vietnam, his students learn to look beyond buildings to atmospheres and narratives. “I want students to see the everyday as something exceptional,” he said. “They are the future stewards of the city’s identity.”

That identity, he argued, will not be found in uniform towers or gated compounds. It lives in the interplay between past and present, form and feeling, people and place. “Cities like Tokyo show us it’s possible to modernise without losing soul,” he said. “Vietnam can do the same if we design with care.”

His advice to the next generation? Embrace complexity. “Urban problems don’t have perfect solutions,” he said. “But they do have possibilities. And those start with listening -- to communities, to space, and to the overlooked rhythms of everyday life.”

As Ho Chi Minh City looks toward 2050, its future may depend not just on innovation and infrastructure, but on how well it preserves what’s already there: the unexceptional, the informal, the deeply human parts of the city that make it feel like home.

Vietnam 2050: The vision ahead is a thought leadership series powered by RMIT Vietnam’s academic experts, exploring what Vietnam could become over the next 25 years. Each article unpacks potential major shifts – from smart cities and education to tech and entrepreneurship – offering bold predictions and practical ideas for a future-ready nation. Discover more insights here.

Story: Ha Hoang

Communication and design

09 October 2025

Engage

Contact RMIT News

Find an expert

RMIT Vietnam facts & figures

Designing the future by honouring the “everyday”