A redefined estate for the future
AIR-ESTATE
Writer
September - 2025
Speculative projects, whether built, imagined, or abandoned, offer an entry point into understanding how futures are shaped through design. In reviewing these works, I am less interested in whether they succeeded or failed, and more in how they reveal the cultural anxieties, ambitions, and blind spots of their time.
My personal reflections build on this: I find that the act of writing, careful writing, helps me distill thoughts and transform scattered information into a linear process. It takes time, a lot of time, to write things down like this, but it is simply how my brain works, unfortunately.
Through this method I can treat data, concepts, and precedents not as noise but as a kind of archive, a sacred record to think with.
In this phase I also became quite fixated on the ideology and works of Archigram, whose radical speculations continue to inspire me. The following reflections are heavily shaped by their approach, both in spirit and in method.
Phú Mỹ Hưng, like most privately developed residential areas in Vietnam, is primarily about selling real estate, lifestyle, and social status. Hưng Vượng 1, one of the very first developments in the area, was advertised as a neighborhood with full tiện ích (amenities). This mirrors the larger trend of privately owned real estate projects creating self-contained ecosystems of convenience.
My focus is on people’s thoughts and uncertainties: from children, young adults, and working adults, to the elderly; from those who own one or several houses, to those who only rent here (like myself). How do they view the life they are living? What do they wish could be better?
A fundamental reality of Vietnamese society today is that real estate equals gold. Unlike developed Asian countries whose corporate giants grow from technological innovation - Samsung, Alibaba, Hyundai, Hitachi, semiconductor firms - Vietnam’s richest groups and billionaires grow wealth by buying land, developing luxury housing in remote areas, and selling at inflated prices. Vietnam is still a developing country, yet house prices reach millions of dollars. The older generation keeps buying, pushing prices higher, while the younger generation can no longer dream of ownership.
In Vietnamese culture, there is a saying: “An cư lạc nghiệp” - once you settle down, your career and financial life will flourish.
Today, this feels increasingly untrue, even unattainable, for young people. Most Vietnamese still desire nhà đất (a ground house), not apartments. Yet corporations push “branded real estate” projects - Grand Marina, Hilton, Marriott,... reframing status around apartment ownership. Infrastructure and branding seem to outpace human needs, echoing what I described earlier as a Zone of Limbo.
To “complicate” things further, apartment ownership in Vietnam usually lasts only 50 years - essentially a long-term rental, with no guarantee of housing for one’s children or grandchildren.
The government has introduced nhà ở xã hội (social housing) at more affordable prices, but the supply is minimal, often compared to a lottery. Worse still, civil servants and insiders frequently secure these units first, reselling them for profit.
This is the context.
From here, I arrive at a speculative scenario for Phú Mỹ Hưng and Hưng Vượng 1:
when land inevitably runs out, developers will need to find new “estates” to package and sell.
Unable to expand outward (bề rộng), they will expand upward (bề cao).
Instead of investing in resource-heavy high-rises with uncertain buyers, they turn to the ultimate commodity: air space - an apparently unlimited resource.
Air will be sold in cubic plots. The lower levels, polluted and noisy, are less desirable, while the higher levels become increasingly isolated and prestigious - mirroring how real estate already stratifies by location.
Alongside these plots, companies will sell inhabitable solutions: hot-air-plane-like floating houses, modular units, and expandable structures - something conventional apartment blocks cannot offer.
The idea of monetizing air or air space is not entirely new.
It has been practiced for decades, most notably in New York City under the system of air rights. In this context, air rights refer to the legal ability of property owners to transfer or sell the unused development capacity of their land to adjacent lots.
For example, if a building is only five stories tall but zoning regulations allow up to ten, the unused five stories of “air” can be sold to a neighboring property owner. This enables the buyer to build taller than their own zoning would normally permit. In other words, the empty vertical space above a property becomes a tradable asset - bought, sold, and speculated upon just like land itself.
The practice has allowed developers in NYC to unlock profit from otherwise unused capacity, and it has created entire economies of trading invisible parcels of space.
This precedent shows that the concept of turning air into real estate is not an absurd invention of speculative fiction, but part of a long-standing real estate logic: wherever land runs out, capital finds ways to monetize what seems intangible.
Taking Archigram’s Instant City as both case study and manifesto, I imagine how this speculative market could be introduced. Just as developers once fed the public desire to own apartments, they now frame a new ideal:
“the modern nomad.”
Whereas tradition emphasized “an cư lạc nghiệp” (settle down to prosper), this vision promotes “di cư lạc nghiệp” (move to prosper).
In a globalized, mobile economy, prosperity no longer requires a permanent house in one place. Instead, people carry their homes and move where opportunity lies. Land prices in central CBDs lose their chokehold - because if you want access, you simply move there.
Advertisement logic:
“Tận hưởng toàn bộ tiện ích và an ninh của Phú Mỹ Hưng mà không cần mức giá cao ngất ngưởng.” (Enjoy the full amenities and security of Phú Mỹ Hưng without the exorbitant price tag.)
Demographically, this neighborhood is already shaped by mobility. Many Koreans and Japanese live here, close to Saigon South’s export zones and industrial parks (tech, construction, furniture, etc.). This reinforces the logic of nomadism: people move where work is.
Such speculation plays directly into the psychology of the Vietnamese middle class, who live with deep uncertainty: fear of falling behind, fear of missing opportunities, fear of being trapped in poverty.
Vietnam has also just undergone administrative restructuring (sáp nhập hành chính). The question now becomes: “An cư ở đâu cho vừa?” - Where can one truly settle? Or, perhaps, do we even need to cram into just two metropolitan centers, Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City?