Agent Orange in A Luoi Valley
Ylan Vo visits A Luoi Valley to understand the long-term impacts of the United States Army's use of Agent Orange in the region during the Vietnam War.
The Deborah J. Norden Fund 2015
Ylan Vo: “Ecologies of War and Recovery: A Case Study in Vietnam’s A Luoi Valley”
Credit: Ylan Vo.
The Deborah J. Norden Fund, a program of The Architectural League of New York, was established in 1995 in memory of architect and arts administrator Deborah Norden. The competition awards up to $5,000 annually in travel grants to students and recent graduates in the fields of architecture, architectural history, and urban studies.
“Ecologies of War and Recovery: A Case Study in Vietnam’s A Luoi Valley”
In 2015, the Architectural League awarded one grant to Ylan Vo who investigated and documented the A Luoi Valley as an example of the post-conflict landscape of Vietnam, with particular emphasis on understanding the ecological and social conditions surrounding the toxic Agent Orange hotspots that mark the valley. Vo writes that her project “seeks to investigate the themes of conflict, ecology, and memory with the aim of connecting the ex-urban landscape of A Luoi Valley to its historic and contemporary contexts.” Ylan Vo is studying in the Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture programs at Washington University in St. Louis.
Ylan Vo is a designer and researcher focused on strategies that integrate social and economic development with sustainable natural systems management. She currently works as a landscape designer at BatesForum in St. Louis, and is continuing research in central Vietnam through Site and Space in Southeast Asia, a collaborative project funded primarily through the Getty Foundation’s Connecting Art Histories initiative. Ylan earned her Master of Architecture and Master of Landscape Architecture degrees from Washington University in St. Louis, and BA in History of Art and Architecture from Brown University.
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