Viet Nam’s first training facility for nature-based solutions and water-sensitive urban design opened in November 2025. Within a month the university had adopted it for exhibitions, competitions and alumni events, putting working examples of nature-based design in front of the architects and engineers who will shape Viet Nam’s cities.
In heavy rain, the courtyard at the centre of the C4 complex at Hanoi University of Civil Engineering (HUCE) used to flood to knee height. The buildings around it had stood largely unused for years.
“On days of heavy rain, the water could rise up to the knee or over the knee level,” says Tran Mai Kim Ngan, a student in the Faculty of Architecture and Planning.
In the first week of November 2025 the complex reopened as Viet Nam’s first training facility for nature-based solutions and water-sensitive urban design, with permeable paving, rain gardens and a rooftop rainwater harvesting system managing the water that once pooled there. International Centre for Environmental Management (ICEM), in association with Nippon Koei, provided technical assistance for the renovation of the HUCE’s C4 complex and its transformation into a Nature-based Solutions (NbS) training hub. The partnership led by ICEM developed the detailed engineering design and managed the procurement of the renovation works. ICEM also designed and delivered a three-day workshop that opened the hub to 60 students, planners and experts.
Before that month was out, the same space had hosted a photography exhibition, the launch of the Faculty of Architecture and Planning’s alumni committee, and a 24-hour student competition to design a memorial area for Dong Xuan market. By October 2026, the hub had hosted eight events, including the technical training it was built for, and became an integral part of the University’s teaching and training activities, with its facilities and resources incorporated into the curriculum.
The hub was developed under the Asian Development Bank’s Secondary Green Cities Development project, with funding from the Global Environment Facility, through collaboration between the ICEM-led joint venture and HUCE
Designed in part by the students who use it
Students had a hand in the scheme before it was built. A campus competition invited them to redesign the derelict courtyard, and elements of their proposals carried into the final design, including opening up the middle block so that the two courtyards connect.
Seven demonstration boxes now show how bioretention basins, tree pits, permeable pavements and green roofs capture, retain, infiltrate and filter stormwater. Green walls, rain gardens and the rooftop harvesting system complete the picture, giving students and professionals a working example of how nature-based solutions complement conventional drainage.
“What we are hoping is that the students, future engineers, can come to this Training Hub and get their hands dirty, to understand how these assets work, and be comfortable in designing and using NbS in their future career,” says Alexander Nash, Urban Development Specialist at ADB.
Green walls at the entrance of the NbS Training Hub
A space the university made its own
Events held at the hub in its first year:
- Training workshop on nature-based solutions (NbS) and water-sensitive urban design, November 2025. Three days of hands-on exercises for 60 participants, testing the demonstration boxes and measuring water quality.
- “C4 Through the Lens” exhibition, November 2025. Photographs of the renovated complex, chosen by competition.
- Launch of the Faculty of Architecture and Planning Alumni Liaison Committee, November 2025.
- AXIS Creative Camp #02, November 2025. A 24-hour competition to design a memorial area for Dong Xuan market, run by the Architecture Student Club.
- Rapid Design A and B, and graphic design, 15th National Architecture Student Festival, January 2026.
- Launch of the Architecture Student Media Club, February 2026.
- Italian Design Day, March 2026. Global design trends and the role of architecture in urban regeneration, heritage and sustainable development.
- KD TALK #01, October 2026. Part of the celebrations marking 70 years of education and 60 years since HUCE was founded.
Why NbS matters in urban spaces
Climate-resilient urban development needs two things that rarely sit in the same room. Technical understanding of how a bioretention basin performs under local rainfall, and the design judgement to place it where people will actually use and value it.
The hub now hosts both. Students who test a demonstration box in a training session return weeks later to sketch a memorial square in the same building. Architects attending Italian Design Day walk past a green wall doing real work.
It also answers a question that follows every donor-funded facility. What happens when the project closes? A building used only for scheduled training depends on someone scheduling training. A building the faculty books for its own exhibitions, launches and competitions has been absorbed into the institution, and institutions maintain what they use.
For the students, the shift is in how they think about scale. “Before, I felt that these were big things,” says Nguyen Sy Khai, also of the Faculty of Architecture and Planning, “but now I think an accumulation of small projects can solve the problem.”
