Archinect - News

A perforated brick facade wraps Tropical Space’s new Ho Chi Minh City office building

2023-06-13T11:42:00-04:00

Vietnam-based architecture practice Tropical Space has completed an office building in Ho Chi Minh City featuring perforated brick walls. Named Premier Office, the scheme was developed with attention to maximizing natural light throughout the rental office spaces without exposing the interior to intense direct sunlight.

Photo credit: Trieu Chien

The building is anchored by a central void rising to the full height of the interior, allowing natural light and airflow across the property. On one side of the central void are the office spaces, where two facades can open to capture sunlight and ventilation. The other side of the void accommodates restrooms, storage, and circulation spaces. “By connecting the void between the corridors and empty spaces, both vertically and horizontally, the building can create moving light areas and space displacement during the day,” the design team explains.

Photo credit: Trieu Chien

While supported by a co...

Foster + Partners chosen to design 'The Global City' master plan in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

2022-03-07T16:44:00-05:00

Foster + Partners has been appointed as the Architectural Advisors for a new mixed-use master plan in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The firm was selected by Masterise Homes, the developer behind what will be The Global City.

As stated in Foster + Partners’ announcement: “The Global City will be a diverse and sophisticated neighborhood, integrating a full range of facilities for a future downtown city alongside residential units.” The development will span 1,174 hectares (2,900 acres) and include a mix of high- and low-rise apartments, villas, social housing, medical and administrative facilities, a 125,000-square-meter (1.35-million-square-foot) shopping mall, and other amenities. It also boasts easy access to highways, major roads, and metro lines, according to the scheme's description.

A central green spine and two adjacent waterways will run from the northern to the southern ends of the site. The master plan is divided into five neighborhoods, each with their own distinctive charac...

Your Sea Wall Won't Save You

2018-03-29T09:21:00-04:00

Concepts like “making room for the river,” which works well in the Netherlands, can mean mass evictions in the Global South. Too often, the rhetoric of climate adaptation is doublespeak for the displacement of poor communities, and an alibi for unsustainable growth.

As coastal megacities adapt to climate change, they often bring in outside planning experts who push highly engineered, technocratic resilience programs. Lizzie Yarina looks at how this trend is affecting local communities in Bangkok, Manila, Ho Chi Minh City, and Jakarta, and argues that "resilience is not fundamentally a technical question. It is social and political. Planners and designers must recognize and negotiate the diverse "resilience imaginaries" across the cities in which they are needed."

Ho Chi Minh City′s historic architecture is quickly disappearing

2017-06-12T17:38:00-04:00

Others are concerned the demolition of its famed French architectural gems will render Ho Chi Minh City indistinguishable from other Asian megacities. "In the 1960s and 1970s it was very much French, but now it's very Americanized, McDonald's on every corner," said Hiep Nguyen, born in Ho City Minh City and author of several books on its architectural history. "A streetscape without a story has no value," he added.

"City officials are now writing a nine-point plan to classify buildings and mark some for protection," DW writes, "but admit such a huge task could take years to be implemented."

Vietnam's architectural past is being erased by new economic forces

2017-03-09T12:42:00-05:00

What's the value of history? It's a question that keeps coming up around the world as new projects displace older architecture. In Vietnam, many of Ho Chi Minh City's distinctive (and, in many cases, French-colonial-era) structures are being dispatched to memory in favor of newer developments meant to stimulate the economy. As this article in USA Today notes:

Preservationists say developers and government officials are intent on making this city modern and care little for the vestiges of its colonial past. But destroying so many historic buildings, they warn, makes the city less livable and less attractive to tourists — which could undercut economic growth the government hopes to foster.

As Ho Chi Minh City develops rapidly, historic colonial architecture comes under threat

2016-02-26T14:22:00-05:00

“What I realized is that they have very little power,” Mr. Viet, 28, said of his fellow urban planners. “The fates of the buildings were being decided by someone else.” [...] when Ho Chi Minh City’s property market perked up after a slump that followed the 2008 financial crisis, dozens of prewar buildings — spanning the colonial to modernist eras — were razed to make room for new ones. As the city’s modest skyline grows, residents are watching with a mixture of awe and trepidation.