Living in the Mekong delta

Living with water is something Vietnamese people know to do well. The globalization process is trying to set houses and ways of living while the population have known for centuries how to adapt and survive. Their process of creations are not standardized, do not need architect and allow people to live according to their financial and human resources.

By a field research approach, the proposal was to understand people process of adaptation and space appropriation in order to redesign urban areas and giving some food for thought. This analysis report allowed us to discover out urban and architectural principles which are efficient in the daily life of people living in the delta. As the way of thinking of Rudofsky in 1987: "There is much to learn from architecture before it became an expert's art. The untutored builders in space and time - the protagonist of this show - demonstrate an admirable talent for fitting their buildings into the natural surroundings [...] instead of trying to conquer nature as we do, they welcome the vagaries of climate and the challenges of topography". Thanks to these concepts, we designed "mini projects" to respond to contemporary issues and at the same time respect local construction, seasonal changes and remain low cost.