THE PARALLEL UNIVERSE OF VIETNAMESE MODERNISM: https://www.phamvinh.fr/modernism-vietnam
Twentieth-century modernism usually failed to relate itself to the surrounding cultural and environmental conditions. However, it wasn't the case with Vietnamese modernism. By a powerful collective cultural force, the modernist language was extracted from the institutional sphere to be reinvented by the popular masses and became a vernacular language of modernist expression, presenting an unprecedented phenomenon in the history of the modern movements.
A parallel modernism has emerged in Vietnam, designed by non-architects. From a widespread use of micro-climatic devices, a unique language was born. Rather than sophisticated functional calculations, architectonic elements like planters, louvers, brise-soleils, etc. are placed intuitively and spontaneously in a poetic visual game, without losing their purposes. Ordinary people, across Vietnamese regions, based upon a common grammar and vocabulary built out of functional elements, have crafted creative expressions of personal taste for their houses.
Unlike institutional modernism, it gives us a break from elitist and privileged architectural currents to look at the beauty of everyday people’s ordinary “speech.” In doing so, it advocates for the unofficial and unnoticed in architectural history. It pushes us to think not only outside the “scientistic” sphere of architecture, but also beyond the commonly known modernist centers of the world, to consider architecture as an ordinary yet fundamental activity of human expression.
THE PARALLEL UNIVERSE OF VIETNAMESE MODERNISM: https://www.phamvinh.fr/modernism-vietnam