Within a three-square-meter block in Saigon, one can neatly fit in many things: an entire mom-and-pop shop, a barber shop, or even the dining area of a street food stall.
Saigoneers are especially adept at making use of small spaces, as evidenced by scores of street stalls and mini carts on city streets. A group of illustrators have decided to pay homage to the tiny patches of Saigon's space in a new project titled Sai Gon 3 Met Vuong (Three-Square-Meter Saigon).
Rendered in a whimsical style and vibrant color palette, these fundamental building blocks of the city will take you on a trip down memory lane, as some of these, like VHS tape rental shops and old-school newsstands, only exist in the past.
“What if, in the next 30 years, our children wouldn't know much about those used-to-be popular street stands or xe ôm,” the description on the project’s Behance page reads. “[Imagine when] the only way for them to learn about the city's remarkable culture [is] from some [museum] within a limited three-quare-meter space."
Sai Gon 3 Met Vuong comes from the creative minds behind Sai Gon Sau Vai – another illustration project on the city’s traffic that made the rounds on social media last year. The project's credits include Maxk Nguyen as the Creative Director; Art Director Do Thai Thanh; Typographer Quoc Dung; Nguyen The Manh for the font; and Phong Vo, Hiia Huynh, Thinh Le, Min Non, Hoang Thach and Huu Danh as illustrators.
Revisit some of the most popular hang-out places of your childhood via the charming illustrations below:
[Illustrations via Behance]
