Ghost Architecture

Essay and photography, 2025

What is the definition of a desirable image?

This question was raised by urban planner Kevin Lynch in 1972 — more than fifty years ago — when he asked how we might design cities that are both legible and lovable, memorable and alive. I found myself in Ho Chi Minh City during the fiftieth anniversary of Ngày Giải phóng miền Nam (Liberation Day), spending two months in the metropolis with Lynch’s question in mind. What makes an image desirable in the age of capitalism, in a city whose surfaces carry traces of competing memories, speculations, and reconstructions?

Ghost Architecture takes as its starting point the recurring appearances of the term Skyworld and the countless depictions of frictionless futures found in real estate imagery across Ho Chi Minh City. Through a hauntological lens, the personal essay examines how these speculative renderings operate as visual promises, architectures of desire that haunt the present with visions of a sanitized, vertical future.

The  essay  appeared as part  of the collaborative the zine project The City Otherwise: Archival (Im)materiality, published by the  urban space lab Officine Gap.

Our collaborative project was part of the VnXDesign Forum Exhibition in July 2025, held at RMIT Ho Chi Minh City. 

Excerpt of Ghost Architecture (2025)