Dr Rachel Jahja champions human-centred approaches in Vietnam's evolving design landscape.
Dr Rachel Jahja is a lecturer in Design Studies at RMIT University Vietnam's School of Communication & Design. As the co-lead of the Creativity, Heritage & Society research cluster and the chair of the Sustainability Committee in her school, she plays a pivotal role in fostering interdisciplinary engagement and sustainable practices.
With a background in spatial design and interior architecture, her work focuses on creating spaces that forge deeper emotional connections with people while prioritising sustainability and local context.
"If you are designing, you're designing really for and with people," she emphasised. "We need to listen more to people for the longevity of design to make sure that we're designing things in ways that they will last longer."
Dr Jahja is particularly inspired by Vietnam's small-scale architecture ateliers, which she believes offer valuable lessons in sustainable and human-centred design.
"They have a certain sense of humility. It's not about ego or trying to be the best, but about designing in a way that speaks to a certain humanness," she explained.
Through her work, Dr Jahja aims to instil a sense of pride in Vietnamese design among her students, encouraging them to learn from local industry and embrace their identity as Vietnamese designers.
Explore more of her perspectives on design and creativity in our video:
Dr Rachel Jahja champions human-centred approaches in Vietnam's evolving design landscape.
If you are designing, you're designing really for and with people. We need to listen more to people for the longevity of design to make sure that we're designing things in ways that they will last longer. It's about trying to be local. It's responding to what's in your surrounding context.
My name is Rachel Jahja. I'm a lecturer in the [RMIT] School of Communication & Design. I'm also the co-lead of our research cluster called Creativity, Heritage & Society. I'm also the chair of our Sustainability Committee.
Within those capacities, I have lots of opportunities to be able to create multiple platforms for engagement, such as interdisciplinary projects which involve both students and staff and also other universities.
Spatial design is my background. I went into interior architecture, not architecture, because I wasn't interested in large-scale spaces, stadiums, shopping centres. They don't connect with me. I'm interested in small-scale spaces. And then that led me into looking at spatial theory.
So, it's always about this deep-seated understanding of looking for deeper meaning and deeper connection, particularly looking from an emotional perspective of how it is that you can start to design space that really connects on a deeper level with people.
Sustainability, of course, is important, but the challenge that we have is that designing green for the sake of designing green, being sustainable for the sake of being sustainable just doesn't work. We’d need to find new ways of being sustainable and it doesn't come from doing it for the sake of doing it.
But it is being mindful of people and how people use or operate in a designed world and how to respond to human needs and listening to what the needs of people are.
So, if we can start to design better, I think that for me, it's about designing more with listening and understanding, being more humanistic in that approach, and looking at the environment as a finite resource, which it is, and trying to design locally and using materials in better ways.
So, one of the projects that is probably closest to my heart at the moment is a project where it's exploring small-scale architecture ateliers.
The thing I love about the design industry in Vietnam, and particularly those projects that are coming out of these small-scale architecture ateliers, is that there's a certain sense of humility. It’s not really about ego, or trying to be the best, or trying to design the biggest, or trying to outshine other people, but it's really about designing in a way that speaks to a certain humanness.
And they're spaces that are not just small scale, but they're sustainable. There are huge lessons that we can take from that and to start to reimagine or re-address how we're designing in better, more sustainable ways.
And so, I think one of the catalysts for trying to do more and more projects with industry, but also trying to engage our students in those projects as well, is I want our students to learn from local industry, and I want them to feel that sense of pride of what is happening here and now in Vietnam, and to claim Vietnamese design and to be Vietnamese designers, because there's something really special about that.