A building that says too much

Apartment House at 29:7 Nguyễn Cảnh Chân Street, Ho Chi Minh City

Of the 350 projects photographed for our upcoming book, we can only publish around 150 of them. It was difficult to make these choices, so we made them based upon the particular feature or story the project tells about Vietnamese modernist architecture. This particular building at the Nguyễn Cảnh Chân street area of District One in Ho Chi Minh City says too much — there is double-wall construction, brise-soleil sun-blocking elements, and added elements in the composition such as the roof trellis that make it a complex design while still holding integrity. But Vietnamese modernist architecture, on the whole, is so good that we just didn’t have room for this beauty. [Photo by Alexandre Garel © 2018].