The Proscenium / Inrestudio

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Text description provided by the architects. The Proscenium is a small dessert restaurant located in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City. The project is the renovation of the ground floor of a former residential building that was built as part of a large block redevelopment completed in the 1990's. Dozens of row houses forming the block were build with similar decorative elements such as Greekish columns and moldings, reflecting the developer's intention for instant architectural potency. This kind of ephemeral dream is regarded as chimerical or is simply neglected nowadays, and indeed most of those original decorative elements have vanished through the recent years of overdevelopment in the central commercial district, during which time the next trend has already been discovered. This illustrates how an architectural style is written and rewritten during the frantic economic growth that major Vietnamese cities are currently undergoing. Our project began with a reflection on this rapid trend cycle and ended by reclaiming the abandoned design with a new design element slid into the building.