STATEMENT OF GRANT PURPOSE
Sarah Kenney, Vietnam, Architecture
Floritecture: The Flower Village Method in Vietnamese Agrotourism
I propose to evaluate Vietnam’s Flower Villages based on the United Nations Human Settlement Programme (UN-Habitat) Guidelines for Urban-Rural Linkages, identifying specific architectural practices which actualize this urban design. Promoted by the National Administration of Tourism, Vietnam has created a model for protecting rural ways of life by designing villages which focus on a single trade. One example of this model are the Flower Villages, communities where independent landowners collectivize, producing cut-flowers and potted-plants, functioning as an economic unit. In collaboration with Hanoi Architectural University, my primary goal is to study collectivization as a viable and reproducible method for urban planning in the floriculture industry A secondary goal will be using architectural research strategies to identify gaps in the practice. Analysis conducted during the Fulbright year will continue my previous work in Kenya and Vietnam. This study will provide solutions to the problems identified in during my master’s thesis, Conflict Bloom: Floriculture Under Siege, which engages the surprisingly robust relationship between flowers and warfare. With the historical and contemporary problems in floriculture, now is a critical moment to identify solutions. There is great potential for the ethical expansion of this industry if based on Vietnam’s Flower Village Agrotourism model.
Continuing conversations begun during my Aydelott field research, I have requested Eytan Fichman, from Hanoi Architectural University (HAU), to be my academic advisor. Trained at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, he has over 30 years of academic and professional experience, ten of them at HAU. His research specializes in urban studies, building analysis, and design teaching methods, an effective background for assistance with my project. Additionally, Fichman’s connections at HAU are valuable because of its interdisciplinary research and social mission, providing strong peers and potential friendships.
As a Fulbright Scholar, I will be using criteria identified by the UN-Habitat to study the design of Vietnam’s Flower Villages, evaluating the global replicability of this model. The global market for cut flowers and ornamental plants is expected to grow roughly 6.3% over the next three years, reaching a total value of $57.4 billion in 2025. Stresses in this industry include rapid urbanization, labor inavailability, and environmental impacts. Additionally, there is a growing gap in infrastructural development between the rural landscapes where flowers are grown and the urban ones where they are consumed. As recently as 2019, UN-Habitat published guidelines for the creation of Urban-Rural Linkages (URL). Of the Ten Guiding Principles laid out by the URL, the planning of the Vietnamese Flower Villages is successful in at least two-thirds, especially the two which address locally grounded interventions and financial inclusivity. This impressive record has yet to be studied or evaluated and is increasingly important. Study of the Flower Villages will occur at the three scales specified by the URL: territorial, regional, and local. I will compare multiscalar urban-rural linkages, using the case studies of Tay Tuu Flower Village near Hanoi, Van Thanh Flower Village near Da Lat, and Sa Dec Flower Village near Can Tho. At the territorial scale, a qualitative comparison of the Flower Villages will be performed, advancing the understanding of floricultural design strategies that respond to climates, ecosystems, hydrographies and urban-rural proximities. Analysis of the regional scale will focus on the circulatory and social relationships between the cities and villages, gathering a qualitative index of export procedures, capital flows, ecological impacts, and transportation accessibility. Research at the local scale will be the largest portion of this project I will focus on Hanoi and Tay Tuu
Kenney, Statement of Grant Purpose, Page 2
Flower Village, where I will identify specific design strategies for how this enclave spatializes UN-Habitat’s Ten Guiding Principles.
For two main reasons the Flower Villages must be studied by season. Firstly, the farms are affected by variation in the climactic conditions, water availability, daily temperature and daylight hours. Secondly, it is because the economic cycle is based around the Tet New Year, beginning in spring and with peak sales falling in mid-winter I will arrive in Vietnam in September 2023, and immediately study for one week at each site in Hanoi, Da Lat and Can Tho. The remainder of the fall management season will be spent in Hanoi. Here, I will construct analysis diagrams of Tay Tuu and its urban connection, including the layout, organization, circulation, MEP components, and material conditions. Next, I will spend winter focusing exclusively on the social architecture. Flowers are important to the Tet New Year and consumed in mass quantities, making it the ideal moment for social engagement and documentation. During January, I will spend the 2nd week in Sa Dec, the 3rd in Da Lat, and the last in Hanoi, observing the New Year customs Similarly, spring and summer will focus on preparation and growth. I will repeat my pilgrimage through Vietnam starting the second week of March, to study preparation practices, and the first week of June, to study the growth season. The regular travels within Vietnam will allow study of this phenomenon at many resolutions, creating a narrative that is as territorially advanced as it is site specific.
Inspired by the visual essays in Infra Eco Logi Urbanism (RVTR 2015) and Petrochemical America (Misrach + Orff 2014), I will use these as prototypes for my Fulbright Capstone. One product of my research will be a similar collection of drawings and writing, including typological indexes, territorial sections, site plans, and agent-based mapping, explaining the Flower Village model. This will be submitted to the American Society of Landscape Architects (ASLA) Student Research Awards. Expanding on this work, a formal academic paper will be submitted to Scenario Journal, based out of the University of Pennsylvania, and Places Journal, founded at MIT. Each of these publication platforms is contextually progressive, freely available, and widely read by American and international audiences.
Building on experiences as a graduate teaching assistant at the University of Tennessee, casual and formal workshops with the HAU community has strong potential for collaborative exchange. I am devoted to radical design and would be a lively foil to the Vietnamese educational culture, which wishes to expand past the internal focus on rote learning styles. I am creative, accepting, and most importantly: fun. During my research for the Aydelott Prize, I taught a girl in Sung Village how to draw, went to a dinner party with my neighbors in Can Tho, and played hideand-seek with a group of kids on Hanoi’s Train Street. Vietnam has an energy that is hard to describe – communal, generous, open, and shy - it brought out something special in my personality. I need to return so this positive energy can guide my life’s work on the landscapes of cut flowers. After completion of my Fulbright year, I plan to use my experiences in Vietnam as the foundation for a doctoral dissertation. Flowers are a lens through which one can view design, as well as politics, economies, cultures, and development. At Yale University’s ‘Ecosystems in Architectural Sciences’ doctoral track, Dr. Keller Easterling specializes in analyzing the spatial products of global industries. With Easterling as an advisor, I will use her groundbreaking work Enduring Innocence: Global Architecture and its Political Masquerades as a foundation for my dissertation. This path will lead me to a career at the UN-Habitat, where I can advocate for generous developmental practices in the cut flower industry.