Melbourne architecture student Ton Vu has been awarded the 2011 Architecture Australia Prize for Unbuilt Work.

The prize, presented in partnership with ISIS, seeks challenging, inventive and rigorous responses to contemporary architectural issues from architectural practitioner to up and coming graduates and students that stimulate debate through the development of unique concepts and thought provoking ideas.

Vu received the $3000 prize for his ‘Sai Gon Informal’ submission, which he completed whilst undertaking a Masters of Architecture at RMIT University.

Ton’s Sai Gon submission explored the topic of informal urbanism, highlighting the fact that one-sixth of the world’s population currently lives in informal settlements.

Timothy Moore, editor of Architecture Australia, congratulated Ton on receiving the award and said he had demonstrated what architecture can do to empower the underdog, from the scale of the city to the street corner.

“The reality is that 80 percent of Ho Chi Minh City’s economy is in fact informal and its neighbourhoods are cleared as a by-product of modernisation.”

Moore said Ton displayed a deep understanding of and engagement with the city’s culture, reflected in his sophisticated refraction and densification of the Saigon narrow-house typology to rehouse the informal settlers.

“He not only highlighted and employed bottom-up tactics in making a city, but also employs formal architectural strategies, which are shown in the integration of formal and informal programs,” said Timothy.

“Imbued within the architecture, the materialization and formalization of these economies in terms of ownership is not seen as an elegiac loss of culture, but instead in terms of empowerment.”

Times Two Architects also received an honourable mention for their ‘Living with the Murray River: Tidal Garden’ submission.