Profile
Tung Nguyen is a Vietnamese architectural designer whose work engages public space as a medium for cultural exchange, community engagement, and inclusive design. His interdisciplinary practice spans architecture, art, and fabrication, often investigating how urban environments can foster connection through sensory, spatial, and narrative experience. With a background shaped by migration and extensive travel, Nguyen approaches cities and architecture through a transnational lens, emphasizing adaptability and responsiveness across cultural contexts.
Nguyen holds a master of architecture from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, and a bachelor of environmental design from Texas A&M University, with a minor in sustainable architecture and planning. His academic appointments have included teaching roles at Syracuse University and Columbia University, where his courses explored formal and geometric research alongside questions of perception and neurodiversity in the built environment.
As a practitioner, Nguyen has contributed to award-winning public art and architectural projects across the United States. He serves as a public art project manager at Metalab in Houston and collaborates with Bryony Roberts Studio on installations and civic interventions that center community engagement. His design contributions include Field of Histories, a permanent installation at Glass City Metropark in Toledo, Ohio, and Softy, a site-specific project at Lincoln Center in New York. Other recent work includes the adaptive reuse of 90 Main in North Adams, Massachusetts, and the immersive installation Exponential with Latent NYC.
Nguyen is dedicated to design as an inclusive and transformative practice and is particularly focused on public engagement and interdisciplinary collaboration. His collaborative work has been exhibited at venues such as the Architectural Association in London and published in outlets including the Berkshire Eagle, Florida Times-Union, and Curbed. He has been honored with the William Kinne Fellows Traveling Prize and recognized by the Diversity Accessibility Hackathon.
Nguyen is a lecturer at the Rice School of Architecture.