MEMORIAL STORIES TELLER

CULTURAL EXCHANGE AND EXHIBITION CENTER OF SAIGON - HO CHI MINH CITY

Type: Academic project

Level: Graduation project (Semester 10)

Type of working: Individual

Location: Ho Chi Minh city, Vietnam

Date: March 2021 - August 2021

Ho Chi Minh City (formerly known as Saigon) plays the role of the cultural and economic center of Vietnam. This is the land used to be the swamps interlaced with rivers, lakes and canals more than a thousand years ago. It began to flourish more than 300 years ago when there were footprints of Vietnamese people going to the South to settle down.

During the French colonial period, Saigon was known as “the Pearl of the Extreme Orient”, a glorious past of the riverside metropolis. This was also the reason why people from all over the world gathered at this city to work and live, so that over 300 years, a unique and diverse culture has been formed. This culture is urgently preserved and developed but it is a great difficulty to objectively view and analyze it. So, let the very children of Saigon, who have come here, for a day or a lifetime, tell us their impressions of this city for themselves, because Saigon in the eyes of 9 million people are 9 million different Saigons.

Portfolio | Dang Khanh Ngoc Mai

From culture to architectural spaces and users

Residents Activities Architecture Arts Religions Handicrafts

With a rich culture and history, currently the number of places achieving information of the city is not commensurate with the city’s size. The visitors who come to these places to study and learn are mostly foreign visitors. In the eyes of local people, many works are not attractive enough for travelling destinations.

The design needs to have a unique form and organize richer and more novel activities to increase attraction

Using the Saigon River as the axis, recreate the shape of this area on the construction site as a mirror image of the old canals.

Landscape water lines created from this shape on the site will be the main ideas for the design inspiration as well as being used to organize the space.

Site analysis

Design options

Concept developing progress

Studies of developing elevation images

Initial designs

Selected design

Overall design developing progress

Space illustration

Main activities

Portfolio | Dang Khanh Ngoc Mai

Layering walls structures

Space characteristics

ILLUSTRATION OF WALLS AND TYPES OF COVERING

DETAILED ELEVATION OF 1000mm-THICK WALL

Typical detailed plan of frame and composite panels

DETAILED SECTION OF COVER WALL

Typical detailed plan of frame and composite panels joint

DETAILED SECTION A-A