Way Out For City’s Architecture: Labyrinthine
By Da Ban
Practicing architects and urban authorities dissected HCM City’s current architecture at a workshop
It’s tough to give a quantitative assessment of HCM City’s architecture during the past five or 10 years. However, architect Le Quang Ninh had his own view. “In my opinion, the good-bad ratio is 4 to 6,” he said, adding that practicing architects and urban management authorities would sharply disagree on this matter. Ninh was right because after he had stated the ratio, Nguyen Trong Hoa, director of the HCM City Institute for Development Studies and former director of the HCM City Department of Planning and Architecture, said he would prefer a 5:5 ratio instead.
However, most participants in the November 27 workshop on architecture and architects’ operations during 2005-2010 reached the same conclusion. They said that despite a rapid expansion both in size and space and a diversity in housing forms, HCM City has been losing its urban characteristics, the city’s architecture strategy for new arterial roads lags behind and its planning is patchy. Meanwhile, management agencies have yet to solve remaining urban problems and chart out a conspicuous urban strategy for the city.
Architects exemplified cases which illustrate this reality. For instance, the East-West Highway project (the HCM City section) has destroyed much of the historical landscape along the Ben Nghe-Tau Hu Canal, but a strategy for creating a new one is not in sight. As a result, the Ben Nghe Canal has been much narrower, turning the riverine business which was once hectic in HCM City into history.
In another example, a participant deemed the development of high-rises in the city’s center “a big mistake.” According to architect Luong Anh Dung, aside from the overload of the existing urban infrastructure, most high-rises in the downtown area are out of tune with the old architecture in their neighborhood. As architect Le Quang Ninh put it, “They are spontaneous works.”
HCM City used to be proud of its villas in District 3. However, many of them have been torn down to give way to buildings with a variety of styles from different nations. High-rises have been mushrooming not only in the downtown area but also in the suburb in the form of office and apartment buildings.
A way out: labyrinthine
HCM City’s current architecture is “too intricate,” and that intricacy, said Le Quang Ninh, has stemmed from the fact that “everybody has their own way while nobody plays the role of a conductor and nobody is held responsible.”
Architect Nguyen Van Tat said the information between architects and urban authorities is inadequate. Architect Nguyen Ngoc Dung, meanwhile, blamed authorities for the current situation. However, some said architects should blame themselves for the bad architecture of HCM City.
Nguyen Trong Hoa acknowledged that authorities should be partly accountable for what has happened in HCM City’s architectural space. “There’re loopholes in construction management due to difficulties in composing construction regulations. Leaders are used to ‘spontaneous mind’ and don’t want to be tied up with such regulations. We have tried to introduce some regulations but few have been approved.”
Many speakers at the workshop said an urgent task concerns building a comprehensive legal framework, in particular the Law on Architects. However, architect Ton That Liem argued that given the current architectural confusion, “the priority of urban projects should be assessed at one specific time.”
Architect Nguyen Van Tan contended that HCM City’s current architecture is like an ill person who should be left with a rest. He suggested that authorities “should issue a three-year ban on construction of high-rises in the downtown area, replacing them with counterparts in the suburb.”
Some architects disagreed with their colleagues about what the former said “a too gloomy view” on the city’s architecture. Architect Vu Dai Hai said at present, many new constructions look quite all right provided that they stand alone. But “when put together, they will become ugly,” he said. The reason is a lack of a comprehensive urban planning and management authorities with adequate competences.
Hai said one of the vexing problems is training in the field of urban planning. This should be carried out by recruiting practicing architects, not students. “Urban planning training is the lifebuoy of the current architectural situation [in this city],” he added.