Hanoian Heights: The Commercial Skyscraper in a Socialist State

HANOIAN HEIGHTS

Y A C I N E

A B E D

HANOIAN HEIGHTS The Commercial Skyscraper in a Socialist City

Yacine Abed Supervisor: Dr Emily So Design Supervisors: James Pockson, Aram Mooradian and Ingrid Schrรถder

Hughes Hall, University of Cambridge An essay submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the MPhil in Architecture & Urban Design (2018-2020) Essay 3: Pilot Thesis, submitted on the 23rd of April 2019 Word Count: 4,963

CONTENTS

CONTENTS

Prologue

2

Introduction

4

Statement on Method

6

Challenges I. A Rankings-Based Development

8

II. The Fourth Industrial Revolution

10

III. The Luxury Fallacy

12

IV. Where Civic Life Ends

14

V. State Legitimacy

16

Opportunities I. Anyone, Anywhere

20

II. Land Use, Land Policy

22

III. A Structure for Infrastructure

24

Conclusion: Key Research Objectives

25

Bibliography

27

Appendix

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HANOIAN HEIGHTS

Fig. 1.a. Top: Landmark 72 within the Me Tri district of Hanoi. Completed in 2011 costing $1.05 billion USD. (Quan, 2017) Fig. 1.b. Bottom: Plan and elevations of Landmark 72.

1

PROLOGUE

PROLOGUE

2011 saw the completion of Keangnam Hanoi Landmark 72, Vietnam capital’s first commercial skyscraper 1 (fig. 1). Standing at seventy-two storeys and funded by private investment firm Keangnam Enterprises Ltd. (KELtd), the building’s name is as frank as its form. ‘Hanoi Landmark’ remains selfevident. The transparency of the name, more than that of the glass façade, prompts a convenient segue into my research interests.

Four years after its completion, the building’s name was revised. The South-Korean investors faced a liquidity crisis, failing to pay off $500 million (USD) borrowed from banks for the construction of the $1 billion project. Amidst the crisis, the U.S. Government launched an investigation that led to the arrest of former U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s brother, Ban Ki-sang – a senior executive at KELtd. Ban Ki-sang was charged on account of money laundering and bribery in pursuit of paying off the debt (Reuters, 2017). The event triggered a wider inquiry into the company’s financial activities, culminating in the loss of a life. In April 2015, the chairman of KELtd., Sung Wan-jong, committed suicide after being investigated for alleged corruption (Mundy, 2015; Business AntiCorruption Portal, 2017).

_____________ 1. The term ‘skyscraper’ here is used in reference to its technical definition in the Encyclopædia Britannica: a continuously habitable building with a minimum height of 150m from ground level.

In the same year, AON Holdings Korea, another private South-Korean company, placed a successful bid to the skyscraper’s crediting banks – the provisional owners - to become the principal shareholder of the scheme.

Whilst AON purchased it at a third of its original construction cost, they agreed to inherit the growing debt from KELtd (Business Korea, 2016; Vietnam Economic Times, 2016).

The building is now called AON Hanoi Landmark 72.

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HANOIAN HEIGHTS

Fig. 2.a. Top: Lotte Tower within the Ba Dinh district of Hanoi. Completed in 2014 costing $600 million USD. (Callison, 2014) Fig. 2.b. Bottom: Plan and elevations of Lotte Tower.

3

INTRODUCTION

INTRODUCTION

The prologue summarises the financial turmoil and demise - that accompanied the construction of Hanoi’s first commercial skyscraper. Despite it, the city has seen the building typology take shape in seven more locations since, with at least five more in the pipeline (CTBUH Database, 2019).

Hanoi, the political seat of a single-party socialist state, joined the World Trade Organisation in 2007 (WTO, 2007). Kick-starting the privatisation of its many state-owned enterprises across all sectors, the move has unlocked major business opportunities for foreign direct investors (FDIs) (WEF, 2018; Forbes, 2018). In effect, the country’s economy is transitioning from a socialist-oriented market to the free market.

The presence of FDIs has entailed an all-toofamiliar boom in property speculation in the city, which has come to dominate much of its urban transformation in the last decade. In short, the supply of urban infrastructure is less so responding to demand, and more so anticipating it.

What is not so familiar, however, is the sheer rate and scale at which the speculation is happening in context of a) the state’s political stance and b) its newness to a system it has opposed for so long. Speculation involves risk, but its physical manifestation in Hanoi denotes confidence.

Amongst a series of distinct urban transformations that have arisen as a result, my research interests lie with the most conspicuous one: the emergence of the commercial skyscraper typology.

Thus far, the overall aim of my research project has been to assess the socio-economic performance of Hanoi’s new generation of commercial skyscrapers, with intent to uncover missed opportunities in their design, procurement, and ownership trends. Within a lateral scope of research that explores the many factors affecting the typology in context of the city’s transformation, I place a critical focus on its viability as a civic asset.

In the first instance, the aim of this paper is to outline the characteristics and challenges of the most relevant phenomena I have identified in relation to the commercial skyscraper in Hanoi.

Then, I will present the opportunities that may arise from the typology in context of the city, as identified through my design experimentation and literature research. Lastly, through a culmination of the aforementioned aims, I will define a set of key research objectives in anticipation of my fieldwork research and upcoming design investigations.

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HANOIAN HEIGHTS

Fig. 3.a. Top: Handico 6 within the Trung Hoa Nhan Chinh district of Hanoi.

Completed in 2015 costing $350 million USD. (Khue, 2017) Fig. 3.b. Bottom: Plan and elevations of Handico 6.

5

STATEMENT ON METHOD

STATEMENT ON METHOD

Much literature on commercial skyscrapers and their accompanying schools of thought is riddled with subjectivity. Namely, the moral ethics of ‘modernisation/globalisation’ at the expense of ‘local identity/cultural value’ continues to dominate the typology’s rhetoric (outside the USA). Though I resonate strongly with their importance, delving into issues of ‘cultural value’ and ‘identity’ would lead me into a theoretical wormhole. Intrinsically linked to personal values and perceptions, articulating my research around these terms would be contentious at best.

Here, I will justify the socio-economic challenges related to the typology on the basis of uncertainty.

To the best of my ability, I will adopt an objective stance whereby causes will be analysed against their intended effects. Where an intended effect has been unsuccessful, or is yet to be successful, I shall declare it as uncertain. Uncertainty will be the main criterion by which I posit challenges.

The opportunities I lay out in the second part of this paper will not be direct responses to the challenges assessed in the first. Instead, they will draw on other urban and socio-economic phenomena, both present and historical, that may have the potential to override the detected challenges.

The paper will not seek to solve the challenges, but streamline my relevant findings so far into set of key research objectives.

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HANOIAN HEIGHTS

2012

2018 Fig. 4. Transformation of the Yen My District near Hanoi between 2012 and 2018 - from farmland to industrial park.

Hyundai Aluminium owns factories here, as well as offices in the Landmark 72 skyscraper (Google Earth, 2019)

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1km

CHALLENGES

CHALLENGE I.

Benefitting from a growing privatisation of land use on a devalued greenbelt, both local and foreign investors are establishing property monopolies. On the one hand, the monopolies lie in the construction of ‘luxury’ housing in anticipation for a burgeoning middle-class and, on the other, in the sprawling of industrial parks for a booming manufacturing sector.

In the wake of Vietnam’s transition to a free market system, geographer Ola Söderström makes a pertinent case of Hanoi’s economic development strategies being ‘rankings-based’ more so than they are ‘asset-based’ (Söderström, 2014). Terms described in John Friedmann’s ‘The Wealth of Cities’, a rankings-based development pertains to capital accumulation pursued through global competition on a statistical level. It inherently prioritises quantitative growth rates over a qualitative management of resources (Friedmann, 2007).

A booming manufacturing sector necessitates administration and branding, and Hanoi’s new generation of skyscrapers achieves just that.

Stacking office spaces to unprecedented heights in a city of eight million inhabitants, manufacturing brands of the likes of LG and Samsung orchestrate an urban omnipresence. The skyscraper in Hanoi is, in essence, the cherry on a cake of factories, warehouses, and cheap labour.

A Rankings-Based Development

On paper, this has worked wonders for Hanoi. The rankings-based strategy has opened up many of the country’s untapped resources to FDIs, entailing a seven per cent yearly GDP growth on average since 2000, and a first-position rank on the Global Growth Generator Index (the latter forecasts the profitability of investment opportunities from 2011 to 2050) (Buiter, Rahbari, 2011; World Bank, 2019). On the ground, a trade-off is made: the exploitation of the resources in question - land and cheap labour (Huu Phe, 2008; Söderström, 2014).

Hanoi’s commercial skyscrapers are not selfsufficient; they form part of a wider network of industrial exploitation around the region. Foreign conglomerate brands - notably from Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea - have leapt at the opportunity of Vietnam’s trade liberalisation to employ a new workforce. Characterised by cheaper costs than in neighbouring China, a labour-intensive manufacturing industry has arisen in a Fordist fashion. With the industrial sector’s contribution to the GDP becoming twofold that of the agricultural, farmland around the city’s urban edge is being reclaimed by the state and transformed at a quickfire rate.

The demographic that benefit least from this new industrial monopoly are the farmers from whom land has been reclaimed. Though they receive state compensation, the reclamation is non-disputable or negotiable (Geertman, 2007). A 2012 research study conducted through ETH Zurich reports a prevalent issue that has arisen with this model in Hanoi: the farmers often come into sums of money that are much larger than they have ever managed.

This, in conjunction with the sudden loss of their homes and/or jobs, leads to a hasty exhaustion of the finances, after which the loss of job prospects becomes a reality. Many end up in more debt than before the compensation (Pfandler, Widmer, 2012).

Of the farmers who do find jobs, a large proportion end up working for the very entity that instigated their land loss – the low-skilled manufacturing industry (Nguyen, 2016).

The infrastructural costs of Hanoi’s sudden dependence on the low-skilled manufacturing industry are enormous, notably in relation to risk. It is no secret that the pursuit of perpetual economic growth necessitates a culture of credit and debt, in unison with a wider mechanism of boom and bust. In this knowledge, the conviction with which construction mass is emerging in anticipation of Hanoi’s new wave of industrialisation invites interrogation.

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HANOIAN HEIGHTS

Fig. 5. City plan of Hanoi. The red route represents Ring Road 3, which is being lined with commercial and business districts as part of the city’s masterplan vision. The bold crosses mark the locations of the city’s current skyscrapers (over 150m in height).

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CHALLENGES

CHALLENGE II.

The Fourth Industrial Revolution

The prologue introduced the instability of debt incurred by the extortionate costs of skyscraper construction in Hanoi. In the provincial factories that the skyscrapers serve to represent and administer, instability takes another form. Labourintensive manufacturing companies, faithful to product demand and supply above all else, have been reported to recruit and discharge employers by the thousands. As a recent example, Taiwanese footwear firm My Phong Textiles sacked 10,142 employees in January 2019 after its main US client declared bankruptcy (Everington, 2019).

Regardless, brands continue to exploit large swathes of labour with minimal contractual obligations. Fifty kilometres from Hanoi, the Pho Yen district has recently been named ‘Samsung Town’. The South-Korean company has managed to employ around 38,000 people there in 2016, with salaries and employee numbers fluctuating on a monthly basis (Nguyen, 2016). Despite the career uncertainties faced by many low to averageincome citizens, humans have the capacity to learn and adapt - buildings less so.

In 2010, Hanoi’s Deputy Minister of Construction, Nguyen Dinh Toan, announced that state-owned enterprises (SOEs) would resource $60 billion USD from private investors to fund construction in the city (Tre, 2010). Though resulting figures have not been made public, it is estimated that a large part of this funding has been poured into the edges of Ring Road 3 (fig. 5), which connects the city to the airport, to line it with high-rise business and commercial districts, amongst which skyscrapers (Söderström, 2014).

Confounding all narratives spun about its development being a logical product of spatial limitations, growing populations, business requirements and new technologies, history editor of the Architectural Review Tom Wilkinson makes a convincing argument of the commercial skyscraper becoming “irrational” (Wilkinson, 2017). Building on Manfredo Tafuri’s widely published writings

about the typology being both the instrument and expression of capital, Wilkinson deconstructs the instrumentality as being destructive to its investors, as “the market ecstasy of the skyscraper inevitably crashes into a deep depression” (Wilkinson, 2017, p.47). Though this may be an overstatement, it certainly stands tested in Hanoi; as an emerging market with 99.2 per cent of its GDP reliant on exports, the World Economic Forum has declared Vietnam to be particularly vulnerable to global trade fluctuations and economic crises (WEF, 2018).

Moreover, Professor Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum, published ‘The Fourth Industrial Revolution’ in 2017, about a phenomenon that further legitimises the uncertainty of industry and the use of skyscrapers today. Whilst the Third Industrial Revolution used electronics and information technology to create mass production, the Fourth, he argues, is building on the Third. The world is seeing an inexorable shift from simple digitisation to innovation based on combinations of technologies. As a result, the physical, digital, and biological spheres begin to converge, forcing companies to “re-examine their entire organisational forms” (Schwab, 2017, p.5). This begs scrutiny towards the necessity of the expenses and haste of skyscraper construction in Hanoi. How will they accommodate, or adapt to, the challenges posed by the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

Schwab argues that today’s decision-makers are too often trapped in traditional/linear thinking, or too preoccupied by the multiple crises demanding their attention, to think strategically about the innovative/disruptive forces shaping the future of industry (Schwab, 2017).

Even Mies Van Der Rohe, one of the typology’s founding fathers, insisted it was a zeitgeist for the industrial context of the 20th century and not as future-proof as scholars interpreted it to be.

Speaking of future challenges in the Frühlicht magazine in 1922, he advises: “one would have to give up the attempt to solve a new task with traditional forms; rather one should attempt to give form to the new task out of its very nature” (Van Der Rohe, 1922, p.122, trans. Jarzombek, 1991).

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HANOIAN HEIGHTS

Fig. 6. Top: Diagram of the vertical programmatic layout for each of the four tallest commercial skyscrapers in Hanoi (author’s own).

Fig. 7. Right page: It is not unusual to see high-income Hanoian businessmen trading with independent street vendors, such as the barber in this photo (author’s own).

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CHALLENGES

Fig. 7.

CHALLENGE III.

The Luxury Falacy

An investigation into the programmes of Hanoi’s commercial skyscrapers reveals another set of uncertainties. As seen in figure 6, the city’s four tallest buildings all share a similar programmatic formula. Though the layout may seem sensible in its diagrammatic form, the socio-political context of the city reveals a conflicting reality.

In 2015, Landmark 72’s international department store, Parkson, closed down. The 24,400 square metre high-end retail complex at the skyscraper’s foot released a statement that business results were unsatisfactory, with “not a single day of sales registered that could achieve [Parkon’s] expectations”(Tuoi Tre News quoting the store’s general director, Tiang Chee Sung, 2015). At the time, it was suggested that the store’s failure was due to two factors: Landmark 72’s location – far from the city centre – and product prices. As of 2018, however, the chain has closed down four more of its stores around the country, all in or near city centres (Vietnam Investment Review, 2018).

Since, the attention has diverted away from the location issue and to the Vietnamese consumer.

In line with my own observations during visits to the Lotte Tower retail complex, it has been widely reviewed and reported that these spaces achieve minimal sales, with most visitors seeking a social experience (spending time with relatives, browsing etc.) rather than products (Söderström, 2014). Both questions of purchasing power and the availability of ‘luxury’ goods are overturned by inner-city markets and independent shops, as these have access to many high-end products at more competitive prices (with direct outsourcing from Vietnam’s many ‘big brand’ factories, or spin-offs) (Vietnam Investment Review, 2018).

Moreover, it can be observed that prices are not the only challenge for the skyscraper malls. The Hanoian populace has long established networks of trust and fidelity to its independent tradespeople (example in figure 7) (Söderström, 2018), which could explain why Parkson’s profits did not increase after they introduced major product discounts (Vietnam Investment Review, 2018).

Even affordable international fast-food chains have showed to struggle in the country. McDonalds, which aimed to open 100 restaurants by 2018, is only running 14 and expects closures in the near future (Turner, 2018).

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HANOIAN HEIGHTS

Fig. 8. The Lotte Tower in the evening, showing a strong disparity between lighting on the lower office floors and upper hotel/serviced residence floors (Tan Long, 2017)

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CHALLENGES

CHALLENGE IV.

Where Civic Life Ends

Three of the analysed skyscrapers in figure 6 comprise of a five-star hotel on their upper floors.

Mainly tailored to visitors on business trips, these appear to sit underused. Upon searching for rooms online, all room types have complete availability for the next three months across all three hotels (from the time of writing this paper). Looking through images of the skyscrapers at nighttime, it can be noticed that large expanses of the hotels are consistently unlit (as shown in figure 8). Though the latter method of assessing occupancy can be falsified, combining it with online room availability would suggest high rates of vacancy. If this is indeed true, the hotels bring to light questions of space waste and profitability.

It could be reasoned that the hotels are speculating on profit, anticipating a future wave of demand, but they stand against significant competition.

There are a dozen low-to-medium rise five-star hotels across the city that have already amassed greater booking popularity than the skyscrapers.

In most cases, they have existed since before the skyscrapers, gaining a head start on reviews and marketing. Besides this, I believe there to be another significant reason for their popularity over that of skyscraper hotels: their proximity to street level. Whilst the skyscraper offers views to the

city, it asserts a resolute break from its civic life.

The lift journey to a hotel reception in the sky can even evoke the feeling of crossing an international border. In contrast, the low-to-medium rise hotels can offer that same “comfort in international homogeneity” – as described in Marc Augé’s ‘NonPlaces’ (Augé, 2008, p.68) - without shutting off the option for spontaneous civic engagement.

Alongside or below the hotels, the skyscrapers host serviced apartments. Specific information about their occupancy rates has been more difficult to find out so far than for the hotels, but the lighting patterns are similar. Urbanist Stephanie Geertman’s research on the city’s housing has shown an unusual trend whereby apartment prices increase as they get closer to the ground. Unlike western countries and elsewhere in the Pacific-Asian region where top floors are perceived as the best apartments, in Hanoi they are the least desirable.

In addition, her research, shows Hanoians having an overriding preference for living in houses rather than apartments, for a multitude of social and practical reasons (notably ‘social status’). When it comes to high-income Hanoians, the attributes of a detached villa tend to subvert that of the serviced apartment (Geertman, 2007).

On that basis, there appears to be little rationale for both the location and substantial provision of serviced apartments in the commercial skyscrapers. Perhaps this part of the programme was not conceived for a Vietnamese clientele after all, but for business expatriates in a globalising service sector, however I have not found evidence to support this. It stands subject to further research.

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HANOIAN HEIGHTS

Fig. 9. Communist symbols and propaganda stand in contrast with capitalist advertisements and branding throughout Hanoi (top: Hau Ding, 2016; bottom: Parra, 1996 )

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CHALLENGES

CHALLENGE V.

State Legitimacy

With the many profitability issues laid out so far, it is necessary to pinpoint what keeps these buildings afloat. Between the ‘retail of no returns’ and the serviced apartments, belong the open-plan offices2.

It could be said that this part of the programme is the most successful, as most floors are occupied by company activity3.

The presence of South-Korean, Taiwanese, and Japanese conglomerate brands, however, raises a much wider cause for uncertainty to the skyscraper’s survival. In this new age of trade liberalisation, where land development is in large part indebted to private investments, the creation of public space has become synonymous to commercialisation. The many malls, plazas, rooftop bars and gardens that line Ring Road 3 are associated to being products of the foreign megabrands that now reside in the city’s largest and most expensive infrastructure.

This posits challenges to a single-party state’s power.

Professor of Design & Politics at TU Delft, Wouter Vantisphout, makes a relevant case in his 2014 essay ‘The Self-Destruction Machine’. He asserts that municipalities subjected to neoliberalisation have become dependent on growth and capital accumulation to carry out their public duties. He explains that they are eager to participate in major private development projects, under the assumption that the value of commercial programmes will

increase, thereby making it possible to “pay for the unprofitable” – public programmes. Moreover, he concludes that this route to procuring public space eventually delegitimises a government to its people, as a dependence on the private sector to serve the public not only displaces its autonomy, but acts in the interests of the private first (Vantisphout, 2014).

Vietnam’s governmental power is a sensitive topic.

Despite pursuing a rankings-based development strategy, it ranks 5th worst in the world for freedom of press (World Press Freedom Index, 2019), ranks 117th in the Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI, 2019), and hosts the world’s second largest prison for ‘cybercrime’ (RWB, 2018). Despite this, the current government grew out of grassroot struggles that saw the country through 70 years of warfare and invasion in the 20th century, steadily lifting its economic competence in the aftermath, gaining a significant level of trust in its ‘earned’ authoritarian approach (Bae, 2012). Political scientist Yooil Bae describes the Vietnamese citizens’ relationship to the state being like that of a child and a parent “who knows best” (Bae, 2012, p.101).

Can the new way of procuring public programmes in Hanoi create conflict around the state’s legitimacy? Even if not, the dominance display of international brands stemming from multi-party democracies can certainly play on the population’s mind, especially as they become the nation’s top job providers. I leave it at that. _____________ 2. Apart for the Vietinbank Towers, that boast an entire tower of offices.

3. Occupancy information could not be found for Handico 6 however.

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OPPORTUNITIES

OPPORTUNITIES

With several commercial skyscrapers in the city’s pipeline, it cannot be ignored that the typology will continue to emerge with similar programmes, costs, structure, and energy expenditure for the foreseeable future. It is inevitable. In response, most of my recent design work has focussed on the future repurposing of these quasi-permanent monuments, in anticipation for the worst outcome of the uncertainties described in the ‘Challenges’ section. Misuse inspires re-use.

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HANOIAN HEIGHTS

Landmark 72

Lotte Tower

Handico 6

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OPPORTUNITIES

Discovery Complex Fig. 10. Computer generated images of the interiors of four commercial skyscrapers in Hanoi.

OPPORTUNITY I.

Anyone, Anywhere

In his 1994 essay ‘Typical Plan’, Rem Koolhaas describes the modern high-rise office building as being a condition rather than a place, and that its presence in a city is less so a statement on uniqueness and more so one of universality. He writes of the typology being conceived as an environment that “demands nothing and gives everything” (Koolhaas, 1994, p.711). Yet, it has come to be defined by all the qualities it does not have, distorting people’s perception of it into an “infernal machine for stripping identity” (p.711).

Perhaps it is the events and activities people associate the typology with –desk jobs and financial crises – that hinder its mission of freedom and neutrality. Business and open-plan towers need not be implicit; business can invade any architecture, argues Koolhaas, and the open-plan can befit any function.

Figure 10 depicts computer renders of the ‘standard’ open-plan found in each of Hanoi’s four tallest skyscrapers, extrapolated from structural drawings.

Contrasting them, bare of any furniture or human activity, can allow one to reflect on Koolhaas’ thoughts in the context of Hanoi. The spaces seem interchangeable and, from a certain height, could be in any city in the world. The combination of daylighting, sky patterns, and a timestamp is perhaps the only true DNA of these spaces.

In a sense, the commercial skyscrapers are ideal project sites in themselves, with sufficient freedom to allow for programmatic invention all whilst framed by a clear set of constraints.

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HANOIAN HEIGHTS

Fig. 11. Hanoian tubehouses. The typology accounts for approx. 70% of the city’s building footprint (Lake, 2014).

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OPPORTUNITIES

OPPORTUNITY II.

Land Policy, Land Use

In the ‘Hanoi per Hectare: Systemising Attitudes to Land Use’ paper I submitted in January 2019, extensive literature research on Hanoi’s historical urban development was documented through a series of drawings (attached to the appendix). Using the extrapolated average measurements of plots, property, and roads of different periods and places throughout the city since the 1890s, I systemised their layout on a fictional hectare of land.

Two overriding themes in Hanoi’s urban development were concluded from this study, which both present potential opportunities for the skyscraper’s future adaptation to the changing city.

The first relates to Vietnam’s historical and present stance on land policy. In essence, Vietnamese land can never be owned, it can only be used/leased. This has been of phenomenal importance to the city’s development, as has been demonstrated by the second overriding theme: entrepreneurial attitudes to land use. Domestic land has consistently been put to productive use, exploiting every square metre possible to generate income for the user, with the exception of cemeteries and altars. This is made most evident when analysing how typologies imported from abroad - from allies and invaders alike - have been transformed over time. The Chinese farmhouses, Parisian villas, and Soviet

housing blocks in the city have all been stripped of their political and social missions to be converted into maximum profit generators (see appendix). It is rare to find a household in Hanoi that does not host a trade or business, or that has not converted empty land into an agricultural plot – even if done illegally (Abed, 2019).

The Hanoian ‘tubehouse’ (fig. 11) could be said to be the most profitable typology in the city, making it no surprise that it accounts for approx. 70 per cent of the city’s building footprint. It takes an average of four months to build, can cost the equivalent of $30 USD per square metre, is as narrow as possible due to roadside land being pricier, has a flat roof and three windowless sides to both allow for expansion or the joining of potential neighbouring businesses (Kato, 2010). The internal structure is kept to a minimum to accommodate for as many business types as possible. Many of the front façades are modelled on French colonial architecture as a marketing prop, due to its associations to luxury and quality in Hanoi (Kien, 2008). All other walls are left bare. Every aspect of this typology is deduced from economic logic.

This consistent entrepreneurial attitude to land use in Hanoian urbanism shows promise for the future of the skyscraper, if put in the right hands. Though the scale of the skyscraper exceeds the scope of the informal extensions/adjustments that have been made to previous imported typologies, an inherent adherence to productive use is a criterion that can establish common grounds amongst stakeholders and a more resolved design direction.

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HANOIAN HEIGHTS

Fig. 12. Deconstructing and reconstructing Lotte Tower.

A formal design experiment to convert the commercial skyscraper into a civic asset throughout. The images on this page break down the structural makeup of the existing building, the next page reassembles the components into new proposals.

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OPPORTUNITIES

OPPORTUNITY III.

Structure for Infrastructure

Sometimes challenges can negate or help resolve one another. Looking back at the issue of displaced farmers losing housing and job prospects, alongside the issue of underuse and underperformance in the commercial skyscrapers, it could be theorised that each begins to solve the other’s problem.

Fundamentally, one issue demands space whilst the other supplies it.

Though the social, political, and economic framework of these issues make them too complex to be resolved in such a straightforward manner, the basis of the thinking can start a conversation about how skyscrapers can be used to address and appease wider urban issues. Their sheer scale, structural mass, and spatial flexibility have the potential to achieve much more than the simple anticipation of reserved expatriates and a successful high-end retail industry. A starting point would be the revision of their ownership and usership – a contentious start since the original stakeholders would first need to make sacrifices, or give up part of ‘the cake’. A redistribution of stakes to new parties – such as the municipalities for example –

could start to administer tweaks in the programme that would strengthen it’s civic co-dependence, increase activity, benefit new demographics and increase the original stakeholder’s profits.

Figure 12 shows a more radical experiment, whereby the prefabricated secondary structure of the Lotte Tower is modified to accommodate a different organisational strategy. A programme of ‘stacked’ shophouses and service-sector offices is split length-wise, promoting interaction and knowledge-sharing between the two business types. The entire complex is punctuated by six main floors, each defined by an open public space and surrounded by the ground floors of the shophouses (where trade takes place). The high-end retail cluster is removed from the ground floors, replaced with a public park and an RMIT station . The scheme begins to speculate on the building as an integrated civic asset that would benefit both the private shareholders and the public stakeholders more so than the current situation. This surfaces questions about micro-economies that may happen within the tower, especially in context of the looming Fourth Industrial Revolution. _____________ 4. Rapid Mass Transit routes are currently being established in Hanoi, with one planned to pass right by the Lotte Tower. In this design exercise I have proposed a slight re-routing for a station to be located within the building complex.

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HANOIAN HEIGHTS

CONCLUSION

Key Research Objectives

As mentioned in the statement on method, the purpose of this paper was not to reach solutions to the posed challenges, but to streamline them into a clear set of enquiry lines. The five challenges and three opportunities each instigated a series of questions in their own right, but the capacity of this paper, and perhaps even the project, prevents me from tackling them individually. When analysed side by side however, it is possible to discern common threads that allow for different thematic organisations to emerge. Choosing one foundational theme would provide a clearer framework for further research and design.

After collating my research and design experimentation on paper via ‘challenges’ and ‘opportunities’, an underlying theme has occurred to me that could pinpoint a more practical modus operandi by which to take the research forward.

The theme in question is that of the relationship between the commercial skyscraper and four parties: state officials, international companies, the high-income public, and the low/average-income public. These relationships can frame my key research objectives as such: 25

CONCLUSION

The Skyscraper and the State

The Skyscraper and the High-Income Public

It is clear that the emergence of skyscrapers entails the presence of a new international service sector and manufacturing industry, which has allowed the nation’s GDP to grow. What is unclear however, is what state officials are gaining from it other than global status in a rankings-based sense. Certainly a ‘world city’ elicits the virtues of knowledge sharing and so on, but how does this affect the nation’s political authoritarianism? The city’s largest buildings are now the products of foreign conglomerate brands, which are becoming the region’s biggest job providers. At street-level, the skyscrapers are setting the scene for private investors to become the benefactors of public space.

The objective here is to find out what capacity state officials have to make claims on these buildings and influence their conversion into civic assets.

The viability of the five-star hotels, serviced residences, and luxury retail complexes that comprise some of Hanoi’s largest skyscrapers has been contested. Though a high-income class is emerging in the city with a considerable purchasing power, it can be observed that their expenses favour the independent retailer over the luxury mall, and the detached house over the high-rise apartment. Even high-income foreigners appear to go for the low-medium rise hotels more so than the high-rise ones. Should there be a revision of the amount of space assigned to these programmes?

Or are skyscrapers deriving their programmes for the wrong demographic altogether? The objective here is to gather more research into the socioeconomic performance of the typology’s existing programmes, to quantify how effective they are in achieving their aims.

The Skyscraper and the International Company

The Skyscraper and the Average-Income Public

International companies currently have the highest stake in the city’s skyscrapers. Despite this, their stability is threatened by several uncertainties, notably in relation to the amount of money borrowed and poured into these ‘permanent’ business monuments. If debt doesn’t bankrupt them first, as had happened for Keangnam Enterprises Ltd., their fate becomes reliant on the volatile forces of the free market, which was seen not to fare well with the Parkson department stores. If debt and bust are overcome, Schwab’s Fourth Industrial Revolution poses a big question mark on the entire organisational structure of business in the advent of cross-pollinating technologies. The objective here is evaluate how ‘future-proof’ these skyscrapers are for the shareholding companies, and if they could become economically autonomous through a revision of their organisation and ownership models.

The low/average-income public currently shows the lowest stakes in the typology. The city’s largest buildings do not accommodate for the city’s largest demographic. This distortion perhaps best reveals how contrived the typology is in Hanoi, mostly serving a population that resides in the future - the unknown. In regards to sensible ‘future-proofing’, I believe it necessary for the typology to address the existing social and economic structures that govern the city today. Meanwhile, the entrepreneurial attitudes to land use of low/average-income Hanoians have persistently proved to profit, transforming all previous imported typologies into economically and socially active places (as seen in appendix). The objective here is therefore to gauge how non-luxury programmes, such as independent tradespeople and low-budget guesthouses, would fare in the open-plan skyscraper, and how they could coexist with the foreign companies’ presence.

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1.a. Quan, L., 2017. Landmark 72 within the Me Tri District of Hanoi. [online] Available at: < https:// baomoi.com/trac-nghiem-ve-nhung-cong-trinh-noi-tieng-cua-viet-nam/c/23393864.epi > [Accessed: 20.04.19].

Figure 1.b. Abed, Y. (author), 2018. Plan and Elevations of Landmark 72.

Figure 2.a. Callison, L., 2014. Lotte Tower within the Ba Dinh District of Hanoi. [online] Available at: http://www. skyscrapercenter.com/building/lotte-center-hanoi/8752 [accessed: 18.01.18].

Figure 2.b. Abed, Y. (author), 2018. Plan and Elevations of Lotte Tower.

Figure 3.a. Khue, M., 2017. Handico 6 within the Trung Hoa Nhan Chinh District of Hanoi. [online] Available at: < http://www.dangcongsan.vn/xay-dung-dang/ha-noi-quan-cau-giay-don-nhan-huan-chuonglao-dong-hang-ba-451394.html > [Accessed: 20.04.19].

Figure 3.b. Abed, Y. (author), 2018. Plan and Elevations of Handico 6.

Figure 4. Google Earth, 2019. Yen My District Transformation between 2012 and 2018. Satellite images.

Figure 5. Abed, Y. (author), 2018. Map of Hanoi with skyscraper location and Ring Road 3. Base map information obtained from MPN + Partners, Hanoi.

Figure 6. Abed, Y. (author), 2019. Diagram of vertical programmatic layouts for Hanoi’s four tallest skyscrapers. Information obtained from respective skyscrapers’ official websites.

Figure 7. Abed, Y. (author), 2016. Businessman getting a haircut from a street barber.

Figure 8. Tan Long Land Estate Agents, 2017. Lotte Tower at night. [online] Available at: < http://www. lottehanoi.com > [Accessed: 07.03.19].

Figure 9.a. Ding, H., 2016. Flower installation in Hanoi depicting the hammer and sickle symbol of communism. [online] Available at: < http://time.com/4186440/vietnam-communist-party-congress/ > [Accessed: 23.04.19].

Figure 9.b. Parra, J., 1996. VISA and Coca-Cola billboards in Hanoi. [online] Available at: < https://twitter. com/javier_parra > [Accessed: 23.04.19].

Figure 10. Abed, Y. (author), 2018. Computer-generated interiors of four commercial skyscrapers in Hanoi.

Figure 11. Lake, Q., 2014. Hanoian tubehouses. [online] Available at: < https://www.quintinlake.com/ portfolio/C00001.3fAMKTFwY/G0000lLw6c2pTECU > [Accessed: 24.04.19].

Figure 12. Abed, Y. (author), 2019. Deconstructing and reconstructing the Lotte Tower design experiment.

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APPENDIX

APPENDIX

Drawings from the ‘Hanoi per Hectare’ Study submitted in January 2019

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Conversion of the Chinese Farmhouse I. 1802 - 1945 33

APPENDIX

Conversion of the Chinese Farmhouse II. 1802 - 1945 34

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Conversion of the Chinese Farmhouse III. 1802 - 1945 35

APPENDIX

Conversion of the French Villa I. 1887 - 1954 36

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Conversion of the French Villa II. 1954 - 1986 37

APPENDIX

Conversion of the French Villa III. 1986 - 2000 38

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Conversion of the Soviet Housing Block I. 1973 - 1986 39

APPENDIX

Conversion of the Soviet Housing Block II. 1973 - 1986 40

HANOIAN HEIGHTS

Conversion of the Soviet Housing Block III. 1986 - 1992 41

APPENDIX

State-Backed Hanoian Tubehouse Self-Build I. 1992 - 2002 42

HANOIAN HEIGHTS

State-Backed Hanoian Tubehouse Self-Build II. 1992 - 2002 43

APPENDIX

State-Backed Hanoian Tubehouse Self-Build III. 1992 - 2002 44

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Hanoian‘New Urban Area’ Schemes I. 2001 45

APPENDIX

Hanoian‘New Urban Area’ Schemes II. 2001 46

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Hanoian‘New Urban Area’ Schemes III. 2001 49