Tropical Comforts in Vietnam
Recent architectural scholarship has highlighted how colonial and postcolonial encounters in Vietnam led to hybrid architectural styles that did not conform to fixed categories of traditional and modern, local and global, colonized and colonizer. In this paper, I extend such an argument to consider...
Enregistré dans:
| Udgivet i: | URI:https://journals.openedition.org/abe, |
|---|---|
| Hovedforfatter: | |
| Format: | Article ou chapitre numérique |
| Sprog: | Anglais |
| Udgivet: |
ABE Journal
2021
|
| Fag: | |
| Online adgang: | Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM Accès Université d'Orléans et IFPM |
| Summary: | Recent architectural scholarship has highlighted how colonial and postcolonial encounters in Vietnam led to hybrid architectural styles that did not conform to fixed categories of traditional and modern, local and global, colonized and colonizer. In this paper, I extend such an argument to consider naturally ventilated and air-conditioned buildings in tropical Vietnam. These buildings embody a hybrid approach to comfort that can be called tropical comforts. Tropical comforts expose entanglements between natural and artificial, open and sealed, the technical and the social; they reveal that comfort is a process of negotiation between climate, building, and occupant within a socio-political context. I do this by first briefly addressing the historical use of screen walls and air conditioning in Vietnam. I then specifically consider two buildings in Saigon, the Independence Palace (Ngô Viết Thụ, 1966) and the United States Embassy (Curtis and Davis, and Adrian Wilson and Associates 1967). I conclude with some observations about how an historical understanding of tropical comforts in Vietnam informs a more nuanced and politically vital understanding of recent architecture in the country. |
|---|