• How does Vietnamese society and its built fabric differ from that of the “developed” world?
   

• What advantages exist in Vietnamese cities that could be used in design worldwide?
   

• What type of built fabric accommodates Vietnamese social fabric? 
   

• What forms favour micro businesses? 
   

• Is architecture necessarily making a finished product or is it more about constructing a framework to be filled in by individuals?

Scale

To identify the scale of the design, understanding of the surrounding context is necessary. Is architecture always a process of enlarging and adding? Or can it be a process of breaking down and subtracting? With these issues in mind, and with relation to its context, what scale is best suited for the current social and urban fabric?

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Overview

The urban fabric of a Vietnamese city is radically different from that of a city in the US or Australia. Here the social and economic fabric is very different. In Vietnam, more than half of employed people are self-employed and this necessitates an urban fabric of very small scale pieces and a loose control of the use of public space. This affects all manner of things from the types of transport to housing design.

Context

The largely abandoned 33-storey Thuan Kieu Plaza is located in District 5. This project will explore questions such as, “How do you take an attempt to establish a U.S. style development and integrate it into its Vietnamese surrounding?

The first step will be to understand the surroundings through close observation and then to investigate ways in which the Thuan Kieu Plaza can be reintegrated into the surrounding city fabric.

The project is designed to lead to investigation of issues such as: