Tropical Modernity in Architecture of Public higher education institutes in Saigon- Ho Chi Minh City during 1954–1975.

Abstract

Modernist architecture in southern Vietnam represents a valuable heritage, encompassing a wide variety of significant building types. Along with other tropical countries, architecture in this region not only adopted and applied scientific and technological advances and the merits of the global modernist movement, but also inherited values from traditional and vernacular architecture. This synthesis gave rise to diverse expressions of tropical modernism, as reflected in site planning, spatial organization, architectural form, envelope design, material detailing, and finishes. This study focuses on the public university educational building typology in Saigon – Ho Chi Minh City during the period 1954–1975, analyzing the characteristics and tropical modernist values of five representative buildings. Through this, the research aims to identify the distinctive tropical elements of this typology in the Saigon – HCMC area, in order to inform and inspire contemporary educational building design, with an emphasis on maintaining identity within the typology and architecture more broadly.