Identifying a language of space in pre-reform Vietnamese housing

Abstract

Housing policies in Vietnam have shifted dramatically from prioritising pre-reform self-reliant housing construction for rural dwellers to post-reform market-driven development for urban inhabitants in only 30 years. While climate responsiveness of housing has been widely studied, less attention has been given to the cultural responsiveness of housing, particularly where occupants have constructed their own homes such as in Vietnam. This paper aims to deconstruct selected pre-reform vernacular homes in Hanoi, Quang Nam, An Giang and Hoi An into socially connected spaces that should speak to contemporary residential developments in Vietnam. It uses an ethnomethodological approach to decipher these spaces into a language of space produced by owner-builders in Vietnam. The work uses membership categorisation of lived spaces to describe the organisation of social space in selected Vietnamese homes. The approach and insights from this work should be useful to architectural designers interested in providing culturally responsive layouts for detached dwellings as well as high rise apartments for local residents in Vietnamese urban areas, and potentially other Asian cities undergoing rapid urbanisation.