Vo Trong Nghia, a Vietnamese architect who has received numerous international awards for his environmentally-friendly designs, will be featured in the January episode of CNN’s ‘Ones to Watch’ program.

CNN’s ‘Ones to Watch’ aims to shine a light on up-and-coming creative talent set to be the next big names in culture and the arts, the cable news network said Monday in a press release.

“Next month, the show looks at the next big names in architecture,” the network added.  

Nghia was selected for the January episode by international architect David Adjaye, the man behind the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture in the U.S.

The Vietnamese architect is introduced as adamant about using raw materials from his home country, like bamboo, to build homes for the people who live there.

“Lots of people place trees around you but he incorporates it into … architecture. He scripts the nature out of his architecture,” Adjaye said of Nghia.

“I love the nature, and then try to put as much as the nature in architecture and to the city. That is our policy. Just very simple [sic],” Nghia shares in the episode.

In October, the Nghia-designed FPT Technology Building at Hoa Lac High-Tech Park, 34km from the Vietnamese capital city of Hanoi, won the "Education" category at the 2014 World Architecture Festival.

In June, Nghia’s “House for Trees,” designed in collaboration with Masaaki Iwamoto and Kosuke Nishijima from Japan, led the race for the 5th AR House Awards 2014 presented in London as it was considered the best work to help deal with urban pollution.

Two months earlier, his “Binh Thanh House” in Ho Chi Minh City was recognized as “Building of the Year” by Archdaily, a world-leading website dedicated to architecture.

In March, he was also one of the two young Vietnamese talents to be selected as Young Global Leaders, an annual title conferred by the World Economic Forum.

The January episode of CNN’s ‘Ones to Watch’ also features other architects, including Nigerian architect Kunle Adeyemi who uses architectural ingenuity to tackle building problems in his country’s waterfront cities, as well as New York-based architect Daniel Libeskind, who was chosen as master planner of the redevelopment of the World Trade Center site after 9/11.

‘Ones to Watch’ is scheduled to premiere on January 9.

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