Listen to the Unique 'Dialects' Found in Regional Vietnamese Modernist Architecture

“It was my uncle who came up with the design. There are no drawings left; everything was improvised back then,” the owner of a modernist homestay in Ninh Thuận told me. No architect, just an idea and a craftsman to pour it into concrete.

Modernism is usually a language spoken only by architects. But in Vietnam, ordinary people picked it up too. It became the routine way to build a shophouse or a villa across the south. And like any language spoken that widely, it started to develop accents.

Independence in 1954 gave modernism its opening. Years of war had made rebuilding a priority, and for the first time Vietnam's own architects were in charge. They chose modernism as a statement: forward-looking and nothing like the neo-classical buildings the French had left behind.

The style quickly outgrew its architects. In Vietnam, most people build their own homes, and the improvisation the Ninh Thuận homestay owner described to me is probably how the style spread: a homeowner likes his neighbor's brise-soleil, and the house down the street takes it up too. A shape passed from door to door, until it became vernacular: the language of ordinary people.

The whole of southern Vietnam speaks this concrete language, but if you travel from the Mekong Delta up along the South-Central coast, you'll notice each area has its own quirks. Maybe it comes from local folk aesthetics, or the way each town answers its own sun and wind. Either way, communities developed their own dialects. Sometimes it's just an accent: the straight vertical slat of a Saigon brise-soleil can end in a small curve in Quy Nhơn. Sometimes it's whole new slang: a shading device that curls back on itself, which I've only found in Ninh Thuận.

Southern Vietnamese vernacular modernism is a language from the streets, twisted a little by every hand that built it, full of odd wordings too joyful for the polished modernism they teach in textbooks. Like any language, it rewards you slowly: it’s the small thrill of someone learning French who finally hears that everyday conversations in Paris and Brussels don't sound the same. See enough of Vietnam's modernist houses, across enough towns, and you'll start to hear the dialects too: Quy Nhơn doesn't sound like Mỹ Tho.

Clouds of Quy Nhơn

Where a Saigon brise-soleil stays straight, in Quy Nhơn, the concrete lines loosen into intersecting swirls, perhaps an abstraction of clouds. This distinctive brise-soleil shape can also be found in surrounding towns such as An Nhơn.

Pastel-blue painted shophouse in Quy Nhơn city center.

Shophouse with đá rửa finishing in Quy Nhơn city center.

Villa in the outskirts of An Nhơn built in 1987.

Shophouse on Trần Hưng Đạo street in Quy Nhơn city center.

Holes of Phú Yên

An hour south, in Phú Yên, façades are riddled with ventilation holes: triangles, hearts, arrows, more triangles, and in one house, against all odds, a helicopter. This perforation habit reached Quy Nhơn too, but never with the same intensity.

Villa in Xuân Lộc, with a perforated red beam.

Villa in Xuân Lộc, with blue-contoured motifs and holes scattered across the façade.

Villa in Xuân Lộc, where a helicopter hides among the geometric motifs.

Villa in Xuân Lộc, white-contoured motifs running along the whole house.

Villa in Xuân Lộc, with walls tiled in yellow and white.

Villa in Xuân Lộc, with purple contours tracing the holes.

Curls of Ninh Thuận

In Vĩnh Hải, concrete shading devices that frame porches and balconies are curled, often finishing in a hook. Each one is outlined with a raised contour, painted in the blue or white typical of seaside towns everywhere.

Villa in Mỹ Tân, its façade engraved with plants and flowers.

Villa in Mỹ Tường built in 1990, the date set in relief on the porch.

Villa in Mỹ Tân built in 1989, with details painted in blue.

Villa in Mỹ Phong with a street restaurant in front.

Porches of the Mekong Delta

In the Mekong Delta, the modernist dialect is less a motif than a structure: villas set behind a porch, almost always resting on four columns creating a kind of triptych, the beam above held by pairs or trios of concrete fins. Not an accent this time, but a different grammar.