From Lodge to Villa, Vernacular modernism in ViệtNam

**Article written by Phạm Phú Vinh ** Modernism diasporas can be found anywhere in the world. But in few countries, there is such a seamless transition from traditional to modernist architecture like in Vietnam. Las diásporas del movimiento moderno se pueden encontrar en cualquier parte del mundo. Sin embargo, en pocos países, esa transición es tan fluida de la arquitectura tradicional a la moderna como en Vietnam. Vietnam was one of the post-colonial countries that embraced modernism as the new architecture to continue their ancient cultural background. Yet unlike other post-colonial states in Southeast Asia, Vietnamese architects didn’t use ornamentation or structural imitations to project identity. Works of architects like Lê Văn Lắm ( Architecte Diplômé Par Le Gouvernement, Urbaniste with a 1963 conference on The Big Problems of Paris’s Urbanism) or Ngô Viết Thụ ( Grand Prix de Rome 1955) were staying true to the modernist virtues. Their buildings don’t try to make a revival of the distant traditional architecture. What they used was abstractions, and most importantly, the micro-climatic tactics that tropicalized modernism to fit in the climatic context of Vietnam. These architects, in fact, the first generation of Vietnamese architects, have investigated the new functions and aesthetics of industrial materials to come up with a vocabulary of modernist elements that were later received and embedded into the architectural culture of Vietnam. Vietnam fue uno de tantos países poscoloniales que abrazó el movimiento moderno como un medio de continuidad con su propio trasfondo cultural. Sin embargo, a diferencia de otros estados poscoloniales del sudeste asiático, los arquitectos vietnamitas no utilizaron ornamentación o imitaciones estructurales para proyectar una identidad específica.