Architecture, Factories, and (Re)Tracing the Modern Dream

Hanoi, Vietnam | 2023

Hanoi Ad Hoc 1.0 – Architecture, Factories and (Re)Tracing the Modern Dream of Recent Past

Gia Lam Train Factory

551 Nguyen Van Cu Street

Long Bien Ward, Hanoi, Vietnam

“In 1890, Tony Garnier started working on his revolutionary model for the “cité industrielle”. This ideal industrial city was conceived mainly from 4 separated programs: production, housing, health and leisure facilities in which the production program is the core concept of modern cities.

At the same time, in another part of the planet, Hanoi stepped into its first industrialization and began to densify, taking on the appearance of a modern city as the result of the “mission civilisatrice”’s implementation. However, the city wasn’t designed with any of Garnier’s principles. Instead of applying the strict zoning regulations,there are barely separations between living and production. The factories were located in the heart of Hanoi and some scattered around the city as the belated effort of Hébrard to reduce the air pollution for the inner city. Hence, they remain today as part of Hanoi’s urban fabric which is integrated in a “bricolage”way into indigenous residential fabrics. The Hanoian urbanscape demonstrates clearly the unwillingness of long term policies toward the industrialization in Indochina of Jules Ferry.

Hanoi Ad hoc 1.0 will interrogate the forgotten lives of industrial factories in the tropical, post-colonial urban context of Hanoi, Vietnam. As part of the national call to rebuild and modernise the nation by Ho Chi Minh in 1966, these industrial factories played a significant role in facilitating material culture and abundance in the life of an average Vietnamese. More than mere production facilities, these factories with their own diverse architecture, etched into the mind of its occupants, shaped their subjectivities and subsequently influenced their everyday lives.

After the war, with the nation opening its door to the infinite sea of free market and neoliberalism, these urban artifacts gradually lost out their purposes and were slated to be replaced by generic capitalistic development. By investigating their current urban conditions using anthropological techniques, retracing their architecture with architectural drawings methodology and situating these knowledge in a greater socio-historical context, we aim to unearth these factories’ former selves and subsequently imagine their alternate futures.

Location

Hanoi Ad Hoc is a collaborative whose members are based in various cities across France, England, US and Vietnam.

Hence, the theoretical research is conducted in parallel in Paris, London, Berlin and Hanoi while the production, site survey and the symposium will take place in Hanoi.”

ALSO: https://www.hanoiadhoc.com/activities/exhibition-architecture-factories-and-re-tracing-the-modern-dream-1-39