Join us for an evening celebrating the opening of a striking new photography exhibit by Nihm Do Soo, the artistic pseudonym of our friend and colleague, Professor David Rockwood.
This special reception marks the public debut of his new body of work and creative identity. Through the lens of Nihm Do Soo, familiar landscapes and moments are transformed into poetic reflections on time, place, and perception.
Friday, July 11
6pm - 7:30pm
Center for Architecture, 828 Fort Street Mall, Suite 100
Light refreshments will be served.
We hope you can join us for this meaningful unveiling and conversation with the artist!
Artist's Statement:
This exhibition gathers 30 photographs - 15 from Da Nang, Vietnam, and 15 from Honolulu - two cities I've called home. These images search for something beneath the surface: the quiet gestures and fleeting encounters that shape a place more deeply than maps or master plans. Churchill once said, "We shape our buildings; thereafter, they shape us."
But perhaps the shaping begins even earlier. Cities don't arise only from blueprints or grids - they emerge from accumulated emotions, daily movements, and shared dreams.
What if we saw the city not as something built from the top down, but carved from the inside out, like a tunnel through solid space? Ants, moles, and we ourselves mark our territory with repetition and need.
As an architect and urbanist, I was trained to look from above - to impose order, analyze form, map density. But the life of a city pulses at ground level, in the smallest acts: a glance, a step, a pause in the shade. These are the micro expressions I try to see with the camera - part observation, part reflection, part offering.
Da Nang and Honolulu each speak with their own accent, shaped by history, climate, and culture. Yet both reveal, in their fragments, something universal. These images are incomplete, of course - no city can be captured whole. But perhaps, in their quiet details, they hint at how we shape place - and how it shapes us in return.
