When asked about Vietnamese architectural identity, most people would associate Vietnamese identity with the period before the French colonisation, comprising the traditional architecture of wooden communal houses or imperial palaces. That is widely accepted. But less known, yet more significant, is that this very same identity of Vietnamese authenticity has made its way into modern times, surviving colonialism to thrive again in a new material reality.
Vietnamese modernist architecture appeared in Saigon, the capital of South Vietnam during the Second Indochina War. It was a branch of modernism with a rich architectural vocabulary of various micro-climatic strategies. As a result, this architecture appears lighter, airier, more graceful and less monumental in comparison to global modernism. Unexpectedly, the ordinary Vietnamese people took this language and practiced it on their own in making their modernist shophouses. This created a modernist architecture without acknowledging it, and modernism then became a means, catalysed and enriched by the collectivity of the Vietnamese culture. It became a new tradition of building houses. And primary in this tradition is a distinctively vibrant and poetic taste.
