On architecture etc.

This piece of writing about architecture (and others) by hoaianh is interesting and inspiring. So I decide to copy it to make my blog more intellectual and visionary.

….

Question that I have been asked many times these days when i meet new people: Where are you from? Answer (forced): I'm from Vietnam. Next step: usually a long silence, or a polite comment like: "Oh, how I want to visit Vietnam! My friend came there and fell in love with the country. Quite different, he said."

I have to say that i hate to answer this question, and i don't feel better when hearing comment about the country being "special"," exotic" or "different". I wish I were born Spanish, then we could talk about Calavatra or Gaudi, or should I have been born Japanese, we could talk a whole lot about... a bunch of names :) Or Switzerland, great, Herzog & de Meuron would be a nice conversation. I can think of many countries of which I would like to be citizen, even messy Italy has Renzo Piano, you know. Oh, and I forgot, Cambodia has Angkor.

People from cinema, at least you have Tran Anh Hung and the Scent of papaya to talk about. People from mathematics should be proud as this is our strongest field of science. People from music, maybe you can talk about Dang Thai Son although it was a long time ago.

But for me, I kept silent and kept thinking about OUR history of architecture. We had NOTHING! The past looks undoubtedly blank. We have never had any tradition to build anything big and sustained, let alone beautiful, we have never had any name in architecture. The last century was shadowed by two wars and many years of socialist realism's doctrine. The present doesn't look any better as less ugly/nice things built at home are from foreigners and the architecture from domestic source looks truly ugly :( Is it true that Vietnamese cannot do architecture?

Here are the observations about what we don't have, things that may affect our ability of doing architecture:
- Vision. Short-term thinkings and small scales suit us best, I personally feel this :(, recent stock fever shows this. We can do nice interior, decorate small corner, draw painting, do graphic design, make clothes... Not extraordinary though, but with acceptable quality, this doesn't happen with big scale architecture. I somehow feel that this lack of vision may be the biggest reason for the whole state of cultural (also social?) underdevelopment , and especially with such a complex profession like architecture that rooted deeply in many social, cultural, artistic layers.

The followings 2 are from race:
- Intelligence. Simply have to accept this. Try to work within the stock we have.
- Creativity & imagination. Maybe we have to accept that most of us are not born withthese wonderful qualities. The solution is to copy and paste (I did), this is good enough :), even to properly copy things needs training. However we can copy nice interiors (back to short-term and small scale issue :)), but copying architecture is hard, because it then requires once again vision and intelligence, what we lack.

But then there's something else
- Responsibility. I don't know why we don't have this but this is fact. Average European almost always does their job with high level of responsibility, even with simple job in supermarket, not speaking about super important ones.
- Discipline (thus may affect a lot the ability of thinking structurally). I don't know why either :( It is seen that Western Europeans have strong sense of organising things and following rules while going further to Italy things get more messy, Japanese are super well-organised while Vietnamese doesn't really care to put oneself into any discipline if not forced. Laziness is also genetic?
- I also think about how we easily accept one solution (very primitive one) and never try to surpass ourselves and to think more and push things further. This is one thing that we sure have, with abundance: laziness.


- Finally I think about our whole society is about earning money in the most rapid way, letting no chance for other thinking, no chance for anything visionary, in long-term. This could be explained by difficult, nearly starving years experienced by our parents' generation when the ultimate thought is about having something in the stomach. Having nothing to eat is not much a concern nowadays yet this obsessive thinking that money is everything is lingering like a ghost. The stock fever with uneasy feelings from friends and relatives and from myself made me realize that we have never escaped this, that our life is still all about having house and car or having more houses and more cars. After one or two generations will this disappear? Probably not, once without vision, forever without vision.

... When I can think of more I will add.

How is the future? The future is any better?
….
After so many years of isolation, we started to have a generation of young architects who have talents, have proper education and have strong exposure. Economic climate is changing too, and what is best for us is that it brings even more exposure. For the first time, we have the chance to build our history of architecture.
Hope this will brighten the future.
...
But if all of those characters above are not changed in a majority of our population, then I think things won't change much. Architecture grows with society, not with individual efforts. Thing i fear is that if these are really genetic traits, then we should have no hope !
Speaking of economy, I'm optimistic. But about culture, and architecture, I'm the opposite.

My comments:


What about Ngo Viet Thu, the first and only Asian to receive the Grand Prix de Rome- the most prestigious prize of the Beaux Arts de Paris. His entry in Wikipedia is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ngo_Viet_Thu.

However, it seems that the Independence Place is the only important building that he ever designed.

I think that our people's intelligence is all right (as reflected by the fact that Vietnamese are not bad in studying science, for example), but it’s true that our creativity, vision and imagination are limited.

For responsibility, discipline and laziness: I think the Southern Europeans (Italian, Spanish) also have problems with these things. But they have imagination and passion to offset for that disadvantage. We lack all.

And your point about money is also true. We (Vietnamese) think we need food more than we need art, we want people respect us for being rich rather than for having good tastes. This is a characteristic from a growing but still very poor economy. Look back at our history, we never truly respect arts, especially visual arts. We had no individual painters before the French came. We killed the best architect that we had during the 16th century (his name is Vũ Như Tô, btw) because he dared to build something great. Before the 20th century, the only Vietnamese architect that left certain works for later (ironically, non-Vietnamese) generations is Nguyễn An, a Vietnamese eunuch in the Ming dynasty, China, who participated in designing and overseeing the Ming palaces. So, architects have no place in Vietnam, sadly enough, that's our tradition.