Architecture Vietnam

An Epic Loss of Vietnamese Identity and Heritage

The former BATA Shoe Factory at 419 or 430 Lê Hồng Phong Street in District Ten is being demolished as I post this.

This is a sad day for me personally because this building was my favorite heritage modernist building, and Alexandre Garel’s beautiful photo of this building illustrated the cover of my book about Vietnamese modernist architecture. This is a sad day for Vietnam too, since it has again lost an important piece of its identity and heritage.

It was an industrial building, but nevertheless care and talent were expended by Vietnamese architects in designing a building that represented Vietnamese modernist architecture and identity at the mid-century. But being an industrial building, we usually expect that they have a limited life as industrial needs change. Thus they are subject to demolition.

However, in this age of global warming where carbon byproducts create conditions for that warming, it is important to limit further carbon emissions. One of the best ways to do this is to save the results of past carbon use so new carbon emissions can be limited. Buildings like the BATA factory represent ‘embodied carbon’ that can be reused in order to save the emissions necessary to build a new building. The BATA factory could have been easily adapted for use as a school or many other uses.

The BATA factory building is now lost as an important marker of Vietnamese identity and heritage, and could have been saved through its adaptive reuse.

An article comparing Vietnamese modernist architecture with other decolonized countries

I was commissioned by the Vietnamese Architects Association to write a scholarly article for their magazine,  Tạp chí Kiến trúc, số 8-2024. I chose to write a comparison of Vietnamese modernist architecture, from the mid-century after independence, with architecture around the global south after decolonization. This was based upon the results of the “Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Independence” exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London over the summer of 2024.

While much of the modernist architecture in decolonized global south countries involved foreign architects, Vietnamese modernist architecture was entirely produced by Vietnamese architects and people. The Vietnamese architects and the people succeeded in developing a tropical modernist architecture that reflects Vietnamese identity. Now they must succeed in protecting this amazing heritage so that memory of identity provides a basis for the future.

Thank you to KTS Nguyễn Ngọc Sơn of the University of Architecture of Ho Chi Minh City for inviting me to write this article.

The publication is in Vietnamese, and you can find it here:  https://www.tapchikientruc.com.vn/chuyen-muc/su-khac-biet-cua-viet-nam-so-voi-kien-truc-hien-dai-toan-cau-thoi-ky-hau-thuoc-dia.html

My original English version can be found here:  https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/y28lj1jw6qovtupxutfzn/VAA-Article-in-English.pdf?rlkey=34yg9g0h6473et69qsvsyp6re&dl=0

 

The Heritage of the Saigon School of Architecture

On 30 November 2024, KTS Nguyễn Ngọc Sơn presented a detailed outline of the history of the Saigon School of Architecture, 1944-1976, as well a biography of the life of architect and educator Nguyễn Quang Nhạc. The audience at IDECAF for this event included family members of KTS Nhạc and many former students and teachers from the school.

The original department of architecture of the Fine Arts College in Hanoi was relocated to Da Lat during the Japanese Occupation of World War II. The period of its successor, the Saigon School of Architecture (under various names), includes the times in Da Lat beginning in 1944 and post war until 1950, when the school was relocated to Saigon. In 1976, it became the University of Architecture of Ho Chi Minh City at the same location at 196 Pasteur Street in District 3 of Ho Chi Minh City.

The Saigon School of Architecture was the center for development of Vietnamese modernist architecture that reflected Vietnamese identity. Vietnamese architect Nguyễn Quang Nhạc is regarded as one of the foremost architects of the mid-century in southern Vietnam in the mid-century as well as the foremost educator as Director of the Saigon School of Architecture for several years.

Over several years KTS Sơn carried out detailed and extensive research to compile this history and biography, including several artifacts belonging to KTS Nhạc. KTS Sơn should be commended for his amazing achievement. We should all look forward to seeing the results of this research someday in the form of a book or books.

The Values of Heritage Conservation

My second article, this one on the values of heritage conservation, was published by the magazine TiaSáng this month, in Vietnamese language, and can be read at this link: https://tiasang.com.vn/tin-noi-bat/tieu-diem/bao-ton-di-san-bao-ve-can-tinh-viet-nam/ TiaSáng is a publication of the Vietnam Ministry of Science and Technology. The original English-language version can be read or downloaded from Google Drive at this link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uB3lcsF7I_kIYtSM4WVimI9SVxsdhipa/view?usp=sharing

Here is the lede paragraph for this article:

“The article entitled “Kiến Trúc Hiện Đại: Giá trị riêng của Việt Nam” [Modernist Architecture: Vietnam’s Own Values] published in volume number 17 of TiaSáng Magazine on 5 September 2022 presented the values of mid-century Vietnamese modernist architecture which expressed Vietnamese identity as traditional architecture did in the past. And this Vietnamese-developed architecture continues to express the value of Vietnamese aspirations and their strong place in the world today. Nevertheless, this architecture is in increasing danger of being demolished, with the accompanying loss of Vietnamese identity. What can Vietnam do to protect its heritage and identity?”

Abstract expression of Vietnamese architecture of the mid-century is exhibited in a small southern Vietnam hotel

Alex and I are pleased that our book "Southern Vietnamese Modernist Architecture: Mid-Century Modernism" is getting closer to publication. We are blessed with the graphic design talent of Mads Monsen in laying out the book design for the international version. With his layout, we now know that there are too many pages to economically print, so we have made some tough decisions to delete a few of the projects. The Ngọc Mỹ Hotel is one of them.

This small four-story hotel (now an apartment building) at Two Trần Ngọc Diện Street in the Thảo Điền Ward of District Two is an abstract expression of function in its composition. While the bathrooms are the plain wall areas, the balconies cantilever out with large openings into the rooms.

The beams showing under the roof plane and each of the balconies express the structure. Planters on the terraces are lifted up from the balcony floors to become sculptural elements. You can see by the high-rise luxury housing in the background that architectural heritage like this is threatened with demolition. 

This beautiful architectural photography is copyrighted by Alexandre Garel 2019.

The definition of architecture, by Victor Hugo

Why Notre Dame matters, in one Victor Hugo passage

@constancegrady has an article out on Vox that puts the value of Notre Dame in perspective. She focuses on a passage by Victor Hugo in his book "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," published in 1831. The book became very popular and resulted in public pressure to restore the deteriorating Notre Dame cathedral.

The passage reads like a definition of the best of architecture and art:

Great edifices, like great mountains, are the work of centuries. Art often undergoes a transformation while they are pending, pendent opera interrupta; they proceed quietly in accordance with the transformed art. The new art takes the monument where it finds it, incrusts itself there, assimilates it to itself, develops it according to its fancy, and finishes it if it can. The thing is accomplished without trouble, without effort, without reaction,— following a natural and tranquil law. It is a graft which shoots up, a sap which circulates, a vegetation which starts forth anew. Certainly there is matter here for many large volumes, and often the universal history of humanity in the successive engrafting of many arts at many levels, upon the same monument. The man, the artist, the individual, is effaced in these great masses, which lack the name of their author; human intelligence is there summed up and totalized. Time is the architect, the nation is the builder. […]

All these shades, all these differences, do not affect the surfaces of edifices only. It is art which has changed its skin. The very constitution of the Christian church is not attacked by it. There is always the same internal woodwork, the same logical arrangement of parts. […] The service of religion once assured and provided for, architecture does what she pleases. Statues, stained glass, rose windows, arabesques, denticulations, capitals, bas-reliefs,—she combines all these imaginings according to the arrangement which best suits her. Hence, the prodigious exterior variety of these edifices, at whose foundation dwells so much order and unity. The trunk of a tree is immovable; the foliage is capricious.

It took 200 years to build Notre Dame. Great examples of Vietnamese modernist architecture, like the Independence Palace, took only a few years, but the level of art and the value of the architecture is comparable to a degree.