From Minecraft to Monuments, Gabrielle Tran Imagines Architecture as World-building

Gabrielle (Gale) Tran aims to design worlds where people can live meaningful lives; and a deep sensitivity to culture is guiding this DesignSingapore (Dsg) Scholarship recipient through her architecture studies.

Article by Narelle Yabuka.

This fan of Minecraft, Dungeons and Dragons, and LEGO has been creating worlds using 3D space and built forms since childhood. While she happily orchestrates fictional cultural environments in the arena of games, Gale Tran is now focused upon the lived experiences of people – especially in Asia – as she sets out on her Bachelor of Arts in Architecture studies at University of Cambridge.

“Architecture has more power than we realise. I’m fascinated by how it shapes rituals, memory, and culture,” she says. “I want to create spaces that feel lived in and enduring – materially, culturally, and emotionally,” she adds.

Though she is early in her professional journey, Tran is proactive when it comes to thinking critically about the built environment. From her point of view, there are several key issues that should be front of mind for built environment professionals: public spaces collapsing into commercial spaces, the disappearance of the artisanal class in the building industry, and buildings that primarily serve as real estate products rather than places of meaning.

Tran’s time in the Diploma of Architecture course at Singapore Polytechnic (SP) was pivotal to her development. Studying building systems, climate-responsive design, and Singapore’s planning codes gave her a strong practical foundation. But upon graduation, she hankered to learn more about the history and theory of architecture, which was why she had her heart set on Cambridge with its heritage-rich environment.

She’s also looking forward to collaborating with Cambridge students from other design disciplines to understand how architecture could help to address the issues they face. This will be a way of continuing a valuable learning experience from her days at SP, when she travelled to Chiang Mai, Thailand, for an overseas sustainable design programme.

Focusing on a rural village, she collaborated with marketing, computer science, and food science students to develop a river-based tourism proposal. Immersed in local life, she observed how deeply architecture is tied to rituals and community. She also discovered how to look at a design problem from other disciplinary perspectives.

In her new chapter, Tran hopes to learn how to give more voice to her own heritage. With a father who escaped the Vietnam War as a refugee, she has become increasingly interested in how architecture can carry stories of heritage and resilience.

“I would really love to work in monumental and cultural architecture. This kind of architecture can speak for a lot of the stories that we often don’t see in our daily lives,” she reflects. She is also keen to advocate for adaptive reuse and preservation in Singapore.

Although she looks carefully to the past, Tran is not one to shy away from the impact of rapid technological change and benefits of artificial intelligence (AI) in architecture practice. “It’s useful for helping with floor plans, analysing where light’s going to come in, and how environmental factors will affect the space,” she suggests. “But when it comes to designing an entire building that people will inhabit, AI seems reductive.”

Ultimately, Tran hopes to become more than a designer of buildings; she aims to be a custodian. Her goal is simple, but profound: to build not just structures, but worlds that endure.