Danish architect’s ongoing exhibit features VN’s floating houses

Tuoitrenews

Updated : 03/08/2014 16:29 GMT + 7 

An exhibit by famed Danish architect Hans Peter Hagens, which highlights Vietnamese floating houses, is running in Ho Chi Minh City until Monday and is set to run in Hanoi from Mar 25 to 30 . Hagens hopes to adopt the techniques in building similar houses in Denmark.

The exhibit, going on until Mar 10 at HCMC Architecture University, 196 Pasteur, district 3,  showcases Hagens’ photos and water-color sketches of the floating houses and locals’ daily life in rural Vietnam, mostly the Mekong Delta and northern Quang Ninh and Ninh Binh provinces.

Locals in these areas, which are typically prone to floods, choose to build and stay in such houses.

The Danish architect spent almost two months last year along with his wife- anthropologist Louise Sylvest Vestergaard - and their two kids in the areas to keep constant observations and interview locals who live in the floating houses.

With his painstaking research, Hagens hopes to adopt the unique building techniques with such houses in Denmark.

“Vietnam’s time-honored, innovative techniques with  floating structures can provide groundbreaking ideas in Danish and Western architecture in general,” he noted.

The exhibit also features large posters which tell Hagens’ and his wife’s research and interviews in English, along with photos of canals in southern Denmark. He noted that though the towns along the canals aren’t identical to those in Vietnam, they can adopt similar floating structures.

“What I really appreciate about the plain-looking floating houses in rural Vietnam is that they give locals opportunities to live among nature and cherish all it has to offer, which Westerners have always yearned for. Besides, as the urban land resource is shrinking fast, building floating houses can be a great solution to expand living space.”

“Architecture isn’t merely about designing and building, it’s closely related to several social sciences, such as anthropology and sociology,” the architect stressed.

After closing in HCMC, the exhibit will continue to run at Manzi Art Space, 14 Phan Huy Ich, Hanoi from Mar 25 to 30, before being taken to Holeby town, Lolland-Falsters in Denmark and its capital Copenhagen from Apr 3 to 30.

The exhibit was earlier launched at the Denmark Embassy in Hanoi.