Art, City and Informality in Contemporary Hanoi

Abstract

The urban scenery of Hanoi is characterized by the profusion of informal architectures. New types such as the tube-houses and the tiger jails have given place to a social and spatial continuum where new buildings merge indistinctly with the old ones. Apart from constituting a planning challenge, this amalgamation of informal structures is revealing of specific ways of understanding urban life, public-private dialogues and tensions between individuality and community. Such issues derived from the social and economic reforms of the Õi MÛi era (Renaissance) started in 1989. In order to understand these tensions within the context of modern Vietnam, several contemporary artists, whose work focuses on the urban question of Hanoi, has been studied and analysed. It is presented how contemporary creation has influenced the appreciation of Hanoi streetscapes, which have evolved from being considered a failure of planning policies to an integral constituent of the shared identity of the capital of Vietnam.