{"id":864,"date":"2022-11-01T22:45:44","date_gmt":"2022-11-01T22:45:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/?p=864"},"modified":"2022-11-01T22:45:44","modified_gmt":"2022-11-01T22:45:44","slug":"the-ideology-of-architecture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/2022\/11\/the-ideology-of-architecture\/","title":{"rendered":"The Ideology of Architecture"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe design of urban space was no less than a project to socially engineer humanity: architects and urban planners saw the built environment as an instrument to shape the moral values and practices of the populace.\u201d1<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The idea that architects use physical space to shape habits, values, and ideologies is a powerful claim.\u00a0 In Vietnam, French colonial architecture and socialist architecture took opposing approaches to this manipulation of space<\/span>.\u00a0 From the earliest stages of colonial <\/span>activity in Vietnam, hygiene went hand in hand with colonial authority.\u00a0 More than <\/span>half a century later, in the aftermath of the Vietnam war, East German architects were similarly concerned with health, but their approach to designing<\/span> built environments was <\/span>very different.<\/span><\/p>\n

In colonial Indochina, health was a primary concern for the French.\u00a0 Early manuals written for French settlers promoted hygiene through housing and \u201coffered systematic rules to tropical living.\u201d2<\/a><\/sup> They not only dictated the orientation, materials, and layout of houses, but insinuated the superiority of western sanitation practices through their pseudo-scientific claims about tropical diseases.\u00a0 Houses built according to these manuals were not only meant to be physically distanced from the indigenous populace for “hygienic” reasons, but to symbolize their <\/span>distinctiveness through their outward appearance.\u00a0 As the population of French colonialists grew, the \u201chill station\u201d of Dalat was established in the mountains of central Vietnam in order to promote the health of colonial soldiers, officials, and elites.\u00a0 The justification for this project relied on assumptions about the dangers of \u201ctropicality\u201d (which included the inhabitants of the tropics), and allowed the French to build a segregated European area designed to<\/span> improve (European) health.3<\/a><\/sup> Segregated facilities existed not only in the mountains, but in the infrastructure of cities as well.\u00a0 The sewer system of Hanoi, a project spurred by the same prejudiced assumptions about tropical diseases, only served the \u201cEuropean quarter\u201d demonstrating how \u201ccolonial sewers were part of a larger urban system in which race dictated access to the blessings of modernism.\u201d4<\/a><\/sup> Sanitation, and assumptions about the superiority of western hygiene practices, became a symbol of colonial power asserted through<\/span> infrastructure and architecture.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Paul Doumer, L\u2019Indo-Chine Fran\u00e7aise, Souvenirs (Paris: 1905), https:\/\/catalogue.bnf.fr\/ark:\/12148\/cb34137199k, 70.<\/p><\/div>\n

Paul Doumer, the Governor-General of French Indochina from 1897 to 1902, published an account of his travels which contrasts the built environment of French areas with other parts of Indochina.\u00a0 His description of the hospital in Hanoi (a physical monument to modern western medicine) describes its \u201cconstruction mixte\u201d (mixed construction), neither tropical nor European architecture designed to promote airflow and provide sun protection.5<\/a><\/sup> He includes an image showcasing the the “Palais du Gouvernement” in Saigon which he describes as ideally constructed for \u201cun climat ou il faut pour vivre beaucoup d\u2019air, beaucoup d\u2019espace\u201d (a climate where, in order to live, one needs a lot of air and space).6<\/a><\/sup> His architectural account aligns with assumptions that tropical climates were inherently dangerous to Europeans and that indigenous sanitation practices, infrastructure, and architecture were inferior to western ones.\u00a0 As a result, colonial houses, hill stations, sewer systems, hospitals, and government buildings physically and symbolically separated French and indigenous forms of hygiene.\u00a0 The built environment was not only a symbolic assertion of colonial sanitary superiority, but excluded the Vietnamese populace from benefiting from these allegedly superior practices.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"

Christina Schwenkel, “Traveling Architecture: East German Urban Designs in Vietnam,” in International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity 2, no. 2: (2014), 164.<\/p><\/div>\n

In contrast to colonial architecture, in the aftermath of the Vietnam war,<\/span> \u201csoviet block\u201d architecture dictated hygiene in different way.\u00a0 In her study of urban Vietnam and East German architecture, Christina Schwenkel compares the the destruction of the Vietnamese city of Vinh to that of Dresden during WWII, and argues that the strategies for rebuilding East Germany were later used in Vietnam.7<\/a><\/sup> In response to vast housing shortages resulting from extensive bombing, complexes like the Quang Trung \u201cWohnkomplex\u201d in Vinh used the concept of prefabricated housing and Soviet style uniform blocks to provide safe, clean, and modern housing for those whose homes had been destroyed.\u00a0 In contrast to colonial architecture which was designed to symbolize European superiority, mass housing complexes and \u201csocialist architecture\u201d designed housing in collaboration with Vietnamese architects with the immediate needs of Vietnamese residents in mind.\u00a0 Despite differences in historical context and approach to design, the goals of socialist German architects reflected those of colonial French architects.\u00a0 Like the French, German architects saw \u201cmodernity\u201d as buildings which \u201cfacilitated the flow of air and natural light through the apartments,\u201d and shifted \u201caway from communal living in cramped spaces with shared, outdoor facilities.\u201d8<\/a><\/sup> While complexes like Quang Trung were developed with Vietnamese experts and designed for Vietnamese people, they reflect the same hygiene principles as those emphasized by French colonial architects.\u00a0 Schwenkel notes that while the project was a collaboration, German architects, \u201clike their colonial predecessors, were the latest in a historical trajectory of non-indigenous architectures and foreign styles of dwelling.\u201d9<\/a><\/sup> Unlike traditional Vietnamese housing which typically separates the \u201cservice area\u201d from the \u201cliving area,\u201d the layout within the complex followed more Western styles which promoted a more utilitarian use of space.10<\/a><\/sup>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Despite the focus on the immediate needs of Vietnamese citizens and the creation of living spaces designed to promote the health of its residents the Quang Trung \u201cWohnkomplex,\u201d like French colonial architecture, reflected the agenda of socialist urban planners.\u00a0 \u201cThe state\u2019s social engineering of living space thus focused on the intimate materialities of dwelling to produce new moral and urban socialist citizens.\u201d11<\/a><\/sup> Both the Palais du Gouvernement and the \u201cWohnkomplex\u201d come with ideological associations built into their very appearance.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

  1. Christina Schwenkel, “Traveling Architecture: East German Urban Designs in Vietnam,” in International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity <\/em>2, no. 2: (2014), 159. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  2. Laura Victoir, “Hygienic Colonial Residences in Hanoi,” in\u00a0Harbin to Hanoi: The Colonial Built Environment in Asia, 1840-1940 <\/em>(Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2014), 234. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  3. Eric T. Jennings, “Health, Altitude, and Climate,” in Imperial Heights: Dalat and the Making and Undoing of French Indochina<\/em> (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011). [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  4. Michael G. Vann, “Of Rats, Rice, and Race: The Great Hanoi Rat Massacre, an Episode in French Colonial History,” in\u00a0French Colonial History <\/em>4: (2003), 193. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  5. Paul Doumer, <\/span>L\u2019Indo-Chine Fran\u00e7aise, Souvenirs<\/span><\/i> (Paris: 1905), https:\/\/catalogue.bnf.fr\/ark:\/12148\/cb34137199k,<\/span> 115. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  6. Doumer, L\u2019Indo-Chine Fran\u00e7aise<\/i><\/span>,<\/span><\/i> 70. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  7. Schwenkel, “Traveling Architecture,”\u00a0<\/em>163. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  8. Ibid., 165-168. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  9. Ibid,. 166. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  10. Ibid., 167. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li>
  11. Ibid., 161. [↩<\/a>]<\/span><\/li><\/ol>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    \u201cThe design of urban space was no less than a project to socially engineer humanity: architects and urban planners saw the built environment as an instrument to shape the moral values and practices of the populace.\u201d1\u00a0 The idea that architects use physical space to shape habits, values, and ideologies is a powerful claim.\u00a0 In Vietnam, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-864","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/21"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=864"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":867,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/864\/revisions\/867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=864"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=864"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.spatialhistory.net\/cities\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=864"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}