City Architecture

This space is dedicated to the significant places in cities like Hanoi. In many cases, city architecture is expressed throught a city’s built artefacts – the monuments. If a visitor asks a Hanoian about his or her city’s architecture, one would think of the One-pillar pagoda, Temple of the Literature, the Old quarter houses, the Opera house, or more recent monuments such as the new Hanoi museum or the J.W. Marriott Hotel in My Dinh district. But there are more significant places that seem to be forgotten. There are places of great significance for city life without impressive buildings: the industrial factories, the collective housing complexes (KTT), the urban villages and so on. They are the city architecture that witness the changes of the city overtime, and are themselves container of people’s collective memory, which is important for architects and planners in their architectural investigations.

Investigating city architecture employs a variety of approaches, from typological study from historical sources to immediate experience like walking, or medium such as writing or sketching.