I have worked in the United States, Australia, New Zealand as well as Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong Cambodia and for the last 12 years, Vietnam. Until I understood more about Vietnam I made many small but pertinent cultural mistakes while designing buildings. Subtle things like how private and public spaces are used and how family life is so significant.
I now realise problems architects face when they move into "new markets." While technical aspects of the building themselves are relatively easy to understand, it is harder to fully understand the nuances of the cultures they encounter. Hard to teach that at architecture school.
I will use just one example illustrating this. Phu My Hung, is a new planned city - and internationally awarded - is just outside in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam and has been developed along classic western liberal urban design principles applied without a full understanding of the culture into which it was placed. I appreciate the reasons to produce such work often originates with clients (in Vietnam for example) who wish to emulate other regional centers in Asia such as Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Hong Kong and Shanghai. However there are often unintended consequences.
The elements of Phu My Hung include the town house, the detached "villa", the residential high-rise apartment block, the mall, the country club, the entertainment park, the university campus, the office tower, the technology park, the international schools, the golf driving range, etc. There are wide boulevards and parks, and motorbikes are separated from cars It appears to be designed for aspirational high and middle-income groups as well as expatriates. These groups are mobile and live a western lifestyle, and they value security and comfort and represent a migration – encouraged by the Government – from the old city center to this - a new suburbia which inadvertently is encouraging a segregation within a society the Government had tried to end 49 years ago. This is the unintended consequence.
Vietnam is a country where white skin is a prized possession so there is little use for wide unprotected open spaces. Phu My Hung is next to a city where alleyways are one of its most attractive features, and where air-conditioned malls serve mainly to give locals respite from the ongoing heat and humidity but not necessarily to buy goods. Where the culture of motorbikes is profound because they allow whole families to be transported (because they provide enormous freedom of movement) right to the place of where they want to go, and yet the motorbikes are excluded from any of the planners' visions of how the spaces are to be used.
All of the classic late 20th century planning principles have been included in Phu My Hung – wide streets, active riverfront, open spaces – all totally logical and clean and yet soulless. It is mostly populated by expats.
Phu My Hung's design is very competent and the detailing excellent. It just lacks the vitality that exists in Ho Chi Minh City's District 1 where the life of the city remains. It is as if a reason for building it was to cure a sick patient who instead proved to be rudely alive and relatively healthy and has remained where they were.
This is the challenge of the profession when it wishes to practice across borders.
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Edward R Haysom AIA (Emeritus), LFRAIA, Hon FNZIA
Thao Dien, Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam
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