Minh Quan Pham

Email Address

My name is Minh Quan Pham. I’m a third-year architecture student currently based in Melbourne. I was born and raised in Soc Trang, a peaceful town in southern Vietnam known for its rivers, floating markets, and diverse cultural layers. Growing up in this unique environment gave me a deep appreciation for how architecture is shaped by place, people, and tradition.

My work is driven by an interest in spatial and cultural sensitivity, and everyday urban life. I’m particularly drawn to projects that balance the practical with the poetic - spaces that not only serve function but also carry meaning and memory. I believe architecture should listen before it speaks, responding to its context with care and clarity.

Outside of architecture, I find inspiration in slower, analogue experiences. I collect vinyl records and enjoy spending time listening to music on weekends. For me, it’s a way to pause, reflect, and stay connected to rhythm, a reminder that a good design, like good music, should resonate, linger, and speak beyond words.

DESIGN STUDIO 05: INKD

INKD Museum reimagines Newport as a dynamic cultural hub through an experimental architectural framework that celebrates street art, creativity, and community expression. Employing a modular scaffolding system integrated with repurposed shipping containers, restored trains from the existing Newport Railway Museum, and flexible public spaces, the design bridges the suburb’s industrial heritage with its emerging urban identity. Conceived as a living canvas, the museum invites both artists and visitors to engage in continuous acts of creation and transformation. Through this adaptive and participatory approach, INKD redefines the relationship between art, architecture and the evolving character of contemporary Newport.

DESIGN STUDIO 05: INKD MUSEUM

DESIGN STUDIO 04: NOMA

NOMA is a speculative mixed-use waterfront proposal reimagining Melbourne’s North Wharf, a dead-end waterfront site, as a vibrant intersection of living, making, and gathering. Centred around a looping waterfront path and amphitheatre courtyard, it integrates exhibition, market, and residential spaces. Informed by a form-finding process through model-making, the project explores systems design, torsional behaviour, and flexibility through kerfed techniques. Torsion and twisting orient the tower towards key views while shaping the form of the podium in response to urban site forces.

DESIGN STUDIO 04: NOMA

Acknowledgement of Country

The School of Design and Architecture respectfully acknowledges the Wurundjeri peoples of the Kulin Nation as the Traditional Owners and knowledge-keepers of the lands, waters and sky that surround us, where we work, learn, create, communicate and make place. We recognise that sovereignty has never been ceded and this always was and will always be Wurundjeri Country. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who continue to make a better world through design.

We extend our acknowledgement to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander staff, students, alumni, real-life clients, and knowledge keepers, who have contributed to our own education diversity and growth. We will continue to ensure that staff and students respectfully honour ancestral connection to Country and Place in everything that they do.

We are dedicated to the notion of design to make a better world and we acknowledge that making tools, shaping place, sharing stories, making meaning, wayfinding and collaborating have long been and continue to be both central and integral to First Peoples' cultures. We recognize that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples’ cultural contributions have continued relevance to design practice and commit to: reconciling ancestries of design and contemporary practice as well as pursuing culturally and professionally appropriate ways to engage with a diverse population of colleagues, industries and clients. In a time of treaty-making and voice we understand that there are overlaps between caring for Country and the sustainable production of goods, services, experiences, products and buildings.

Guided by the principles of respect, reconciliation, and reciprocity we undertake to indigenising and decolonising design practice by dismantling colonial structures and challenging biases that have marginalised Indigenous voices and design.

As students of SoDA you will be given opportunities to both engage with and educate yourself in Indigenous creative practices and cultural protocols through a lens of inclusivity, diversity, respect, mutual understanding, inter-cultural dialogue in all aspects of design practice. Indigenous people have been telling stories, making tools, and connecting to Country through visual media, placemaking and place marking for more than 60,000 years and these practices are part of an ongoing, evolving and live tradition.