Architecture Vietnam

Vietnamese Modernist Architecture in the Tropical Climate

 

In addition to its expression of Vietnamese identity in the Industrial Age vocabulary of modernism, southern Vietnamese modernist architecture of the mid-twentieth-century responded in innovative ways to resist the impacts of the tropical climate while enhancing the experience of natural phenomena in the environment. The video available at the link below provides the context and details of the methods used in Vietnamese modernist architecture to accomplish these objectives.

https://youtu.be/CLindLgPr_Q

This presentation by architect Mel Schenck in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, was originally developed for presentation to the design studio of Professor Erik L’Heureux in the Department of Architecture of the National University of Singapore, delivered online on 27 January 2022.

This episode is the first of two episodes comprising that presentation, with this one focusing on adaptation to the tropical climate, and the second on reuse and conservation of these historical structures from the mid-twentieth-century.

Vietnamese Information-Age Architecture

In November 2020, Mel delivered a lecture on the Information Age and its impact on architecture at the American Center in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The first half of the lecture focused on the origins and change of reality we are all facing in the Information Age, while the second half showed the new architecture arising out of this new age, especially here in Vietnam.

Mel edited the Facebook video that the American Center produced of this lecture, and he invites you to view it now on his “Architecture Vietnam” YouTube channel. Here is a link to it:  https://youtu.be/ycLaCleUWVY

There are now several new videos in Mel’s YouTube channel “Architecture Vietnam” that deal with modernism and Vietnamese modernist architecture. But this particular video on the new architecture of the Information Age is most important because it points us to our holistic future and the role Vietnamese architects are playing to lead the world in this new architecture.

The Modern Words

Last April 2021, we posted about the words Modernity, Modern, Modernism, and Modernist, and gave a link to a video on Facebook of Mel’s presentation at the American Center in Ho Chi Minh City on 14 October 2020. The focus on modernity and modernism in that presentation provided the context for the following two presentations on Vietnamese modernist architecture as well as contemporary Vietnamese Information Age architecture.

We have updated the video a bit to delete the introductions and posted it on Mel’s “Architecture Vietnam” YouTube channel. You can find the new video at this link:  https://youtu.be/kIpaN6r5-Sg

Mid-twentieth-century modernist art and architecture as well as contemporary modernist art forms express the Industrial Age. When studying these art forms, it is important to understand the contexts in which modernist arts and architecture were developed. The four “modern” words are essential for understanding these contexts.

These words do not mean the same thing, but they are all related to each other, nesting in each other from modernist on up through to modernity.

Modernist art and architecture derives from the philosophical movement of modernism, which in turn is prominent amongst modern Ideas that arose during the era of modernity. Modernity describes the philosophical, scientific, social, political, and economic conditions that allowed modern ideas, beginning about 500 years ago in the European Renaissance.