Architectural history is disappearing faster than we can learn from it. This beautiful architectural photograph by Alexandre Garel (© 2019) illustrates one of the most stunning Vietnamese modernist villas designed and constructed in Saigon in the 1960s. Located at 30 Phùng Khắc Khoan Street in the Dakao Ward of Ho Chi Minh City, known as the diplomatic quarter in the mid-century, it may have originally been an embassy. It has been occupied by the District One Committee of the Communist Party of Vietnam since 1975.
It was just demolished.
This is one of several recently demolished projects that will be published in our forthcoming book "Southern Vietnamese Modernist Architecture." Our book will serve as a record of these projects, and it is unfortunately likely that other beautiful Vietnamese modernist architecture exemplars like this one will be demolished soon. Regrettably, this building will probably be replaced by a government style of architecture that doesn’t recognize what can be learned from modernist buildings like this.
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