1 Introduction
Hanoi Ad Hoc 1.0
What is Hanoi Ad Hoc ? Hanoi Ad Hoc is a multiannual, interdisciplinary research framework and design programme. Initiated by Arch. Mai Hung Trung and joined by four partners: Professor/Anthropologist Christina Schwenkel, Arch. Duc Le, Professor/Arch. Danielle Labbé and Professor/Geographer Sylvie Fanchette. The project’s title refers to its main purpose, focusing on the insight of tailored urban makings and dealing specifically with the contemporary urban issues of Hanoi. This design-oriented research will provocatively reconfigure the contemporary vision of the forgotten parts of Vietnamese modernist architecture and shed light on everyday urban banalities. The urbanscape of Hanoi is a mosaic pattern made of improvised pieces. Our “Ad hoc” research accentuates the current way of making, unmaking and remaking the city of Hanoi using “whatever is at hand” in order to conform with political, social and urban transformation. The Adhocism is visible from the urban to the architectural scale through adaptations of the urban fabric within a given condition and spatial appropriations on the sidewalk.The project attempts to examine its richness and how these improvised urban solutions permanently crystallised the cityscape over time. Our three main areas of research are to archive, theorise and provoke. The Hanoi Ad hoc initiative is based on an idea of a democratic and multicultural exchange forum where people from different disciplines will have the same opportunity to add to the conversation around city making. In an hypothetical ad hoc condition, an architect could perform as a writer, an artist as a builder or an anthropologist as a planner. Beyond a collection of historical facts, the final outputs of the project will be a catalog of inferences, a formal product of informal urban makings. A mosaic picture of Hanoi will be revealed when these series of ad hoc elements are brought together.
4
