The super cute duo that make up the design studio “Exutoire” are Bùi Quý Sơn and Paul-Antoine Lucas. Life and work partners, they moved back(ish) to Vietnam from Oslo last year, and are currently preparing the opening of the exhibition “OUTLET: Slow/ed/ing Architecture” in Saigon.

As architects, they seek to “challenge norms however you want to see it, to be more inclusive, less prescriptive,” allowing room for an array of uncommon values such as care, commons, and play. The exhibition, which opened on July 18, is an installation presenting a series of interviews conducted in 2022 and 2024 with three Saigon-based architecture collectives: sgnhA, Nhabe Scholae, and Aaaaaa. The interviews are intimate and revealing, questioning what it means to create and run a (small) spatial practice in contemporary Vietnam, and celebrating those that do.

The exhibition's posters.

By incorporating different perspectives on ways of practicing architecture, OUTLET reveals the complex conditions, realities, and concerns of such a setup, but more importantly, the convictions, motivations, and ambitions that fuel their accomplishments.

Imagined as a visual, physical, and spatial support for encounter, the exhibition is formed of co-created social spatiality, shedding light on the collective aspect of the OUTLET project. For this, Exutoire collaborated with each office, making objects as exhibited pieces as well as functional supports. These compose “artifacts of assembly” that aim to bring people together.

A corner of the exhibition space.

I was delighted to chat to Sơn and Paul-Antoine about the project, love heart emojis and all!

Elise Luong:
<3
Hello my loves! I am so happy to be doing this interview!

Paul-Antoine Lucas:
Hello lovely, so glad to have you on this *aw*

Bùi Quý Sơn:
Bienvenue to the wasteland of our relationship <3 <3

Elise:
Absolutely not a waste of time! As a lover of your work, and even more of your friendship, I am so excited that you have the OUTLET project coming out soon in Saigon. Well done ❤

We are meeting here in this chat space because I was hoping for Saigoneer to replicate the playfulness of the interviews in OUTLET. It might push my Gen-Zness to the max but let’s hold virtual hands and see how it goes?

Paul-Antoine:
Perfect!

Sơn:
This is the perfect occasion for us to collaborate actually. I’ve been wondering about how to work together since we met. Combining love and work is a real thing with us haha!

Interviewing Aaaaaa.

Tbd Office building construction. Photo by Lê Hữu Triết.

Elise:
Collaboration, love, work, friendship are perfect places for me to start with my questions :)

The three offices you featured in OUTLET really seem to value their personal and professional relationships. Is that why you selected them?

Sơn:
We didn’t know them personally before the interviews but did have a feeling that there was a strong human side to what they were doing.

So technically, no, that wasn’t why we reached out to them, but on some levels, it was what we were hoping for.

Paul-Antoine:
I think feeling is a good way to describe it. Indeed, nothing could really tell us how they are as people/humans or how they operate as architects.

Nevertheless, just by looking at projects sometimes, you can have a sense of the personality of a designer. Are they extroverted, shy, megalomaniac? :)

With these three practices, we had a hunch that they were more on the humble and generous side, looking to share with others. And that’s why we ended up interviewing them

Elise:
I realize we might need to side-step as I didn’t ask an intro question!

Who is Exutoire? What are you guys up to?? Omg let me add another question. Maybe you could tell us about the exhibition you're preparing in Saigon?

Paul-Antoine:
Complete 360, love it.

Sơn:
We’re (literally) a couple of queerdos, educated as architects, struggling with what it means to be architects, and trying to be our own kind of architects. We usually present ourselves as a queer critical spatial practice working toward social, spatial, and material justice.

Paul-Antoine Lucas (left) and Bùi Quý Sơn (right). Photo by Vũ Khôi Nguyên. 

Elise:
And in this exhibition — which I am gleefully interviewing you about — you discuss the values of care, inclusivity, sustainability, common good, and playfulness.

It really tickles my interests in the interrelation of elements, human and not, and how things like social factors, access, and alternative economics can influence those working in the creative sector.

Sơn:
That explains a lot why we’re (goooooooooooood) friends! It seems like a lot of our interests intersect. The interrelation between human, financial, ideological, social, environmental factors in the operation of an architecture office in contemporary Vietnam is what we’re looking at through the three case studies of sgnhA, Aaaaaa, and Nhabe Scholae.

What makes them different (even though just slightly, sometimes) from others, lies in how they articulate those links through design, almost like doing research by design or by practice.

Paul-Antoine:
More than an exhibition, “Slow/ed/ing Architecture” is a spatial installation giving hints at the discussions we had with the three offices. We’re trying to recreate the vibes of the conversations that we had with them in summer 2022 and during the last weeks.

The space also aims to foster more conversations, new conversations around conversations in a way. We will present some of the images of the encounters, some pictures of the architects’ work, and some of their inspirations, personal and creative things that define them.

Lastly, we’re working with the designers to create objects within the space to host people, furniture/sculpture hybrids that speak to their ways of practicing: an interest for plants or renovation for instance.

Interviewing Nhabe Scholae.

The lush garden in a recent Nhabe Scholae project. Photo courtesy of Nhabe Scholae.

Elise:
So a human-interested rather than project-interested vibe? Which is not too common, right? I love how this project is kind of gently messing things up! There are a few winks in here that are not what we see everyday, from how you interview, the topics you cover, even the language you use.

By making the industry of architecture seem relatable (and *gasp* even fun!), would you say you are trying to shake things up? My take on this is that you are pushing to celebrate alternative processes rather than criticize traditional ones. Is this correct?

Sơn:
Shaking things up is a BIG claim, I don’t know if I can say that’s what we do. But there’s an unapologetic objective of turning the tables around and asking ourselves (and others) the questions: Why is the architecture industry this way? Why are we accepting to build bad projects for bad people, and along the way, disrespectfully exploit the things we should really care about: the people right around us, our employees, peers, friends? Maybe there’s some criticizing in there haha. But the alternative practices come in right there to make that criticism constructive.

Paul-Antoine:
Don’t get us wrong, we’d love to criticize traditional architecture offices, but it’s probably a more private conversation to be had. There’s so much… being built everyday by designers, but they’re probably never going to read what we publish, so what’s the point?

We’re glad to see that you enjoyed the cheeky/relatable aspect of the format we adopted, that’s indeed the whole point. We often refer to an essay published in 1990 by Reyner Banham (sorry for the referencing, I promise, it’s not to be pedantic) describing the architecture profession as “secretive,” and calling it the “blackbox.” What he means is that this secret is just a smoke mirror, (too many) designers follow instincts, preferences, and trends but always try to pretend that there’s a lot more behind their production that people wouldn’t understand.

Fortunately, many practitioners do indeed have convictions, hopes, and a productive critical outlook that tries to challenge the way we do things within capitalist-oriented societies. That’s what we try to uncover and decipher through. Moreover, we’re interested to learn, and share the back-of-house process that allows these designers to bring their message to life through projects.

Spectators perusing the exhibition. Photos by Vũ Khôi Nguyên.

Sơn:
We like the idea of proposing other ways of doing because it’s emancipatory and much more fun. Not only it’s how our brains work — always thinking about how to get around systems — it’s also because our targeted audience is young people, students, the next generations. We want to empower them to practice differently by presenting different tools, methods, and references; in this case, real stories of how they don’t have to follow exactly the trails of others.

Paul-Antoine:
What he said!

Elise:
And so how did you arrive to propose “slowness” as the embodiment of these alternative methods?
I am super interested in Degrowth Theory but I find it really difficult to apply those thoughts in my work, or in urban life in general.

What is Exutoire’s relationship to slowness? Is it a return to craft in design or something more philosophical?

Sơn:
The slowness idea came from the interviewees, or more precisely our reading of the interview transcripts. They all mentioned it in different ways: an innate trait of character, a want to slow down in reaction to the velocity of construction in Vietnam, a fresh change from how they were working before. In the context of those conversations, slowness is rather psychological, philosophical, and personal.

It sort of means: why go so fast if you’re not giving yourself enough time to make the project worth being built when you’re not even enjoying the work? However, in the end, reality would catch up with them as being slow might equal not earning enough money. I’ll let Paul-Antoine talk about what slowness means to us more specifically.

Paul-Antoine:
As Sơn explains, and as you mention in your question, slowness when meaning degrowth — which in some ways interviewees all directly or indirectly allude to — can be very difficult to achieve, especially in an urban environment.

Interviewing sgnhA.

A pathway at Okkio Coffee Duy Tân, a recent design by sgnhA. Photo by Hoang Le.

Paul-Antoine:
Slowness for us means doing less, and carefully considering the ethical, social, and environmental implications of a project. We don’t necessarily do projects slowly per se, but degrowth is very present in the way we build our practice. To counteract growth imperatives of contemporary systems, we have decided since 2019 to be just the two of us, without any employees. This in turn limits what projects we can take on and how much we can produce in a year. Dearth then means collaboration and co-authorship, which we believe is an interesting counterproposal to traditional practice methods, in the way that it doesn’t rely on cheap or free labor. As we haven’t built, it’s hard to say how it will manifest within the construction industry but we look to local crafts, social contexts, and rehabilitation as avenues to explore.

Elise:
Eeeek! Architects that don't build?!

Gosh, I have so many more questions! But maybe I could meet you on a bench in the exhibition?
Can we keep chatting there?

Paul-Antoine:
Yes please, enjoy the kangaroos in the meantime! Thanks for the very GenZ convo <3

Sơn:
See ya at the exhibit for more cute times (always)!

The exhibition “OUTLET: Slow/ed/ing Architecture” will be available for viewing at IDECAF, 31 Thái Văn Lung, D1, HCMC from July 18 to August 16. This event is free admission. For more details, click here.