Architecture Vietnam

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.

Defining Modernist Architecture

Architects and aficionados of modernist architecture may wonder why we need to define modernist architecture early in our book, since everybody knows what it is, right? We have found that there is plenty of disagreement about modernist architecture amongst architects, especially regarding the International Style. Most importantly, non-architects often do not know at all what modernist architecture is, confusing it with modern architecture or classical architecture.

Therefore our book, "Southern Vietnamese Modernist Architecture," contains a chapter defining global modernist architecture. We discuss this up first in the book so that when we get to the chapter defining Vietnamese modernist architecture, the basis is set to compare them and show the differences.

Photo: Rietveld-Schröder House, Utrecht, The Netherlands, 1924

Photo source: Luctor, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rietveld-Schröderhuis.jpg, public domain