Architecture of Happiness
The Work of Hoang Thuc Hao
Abstract
Hoang Thuc Hao’s projects, particularly the community buildings, ask what it means to be in Vietnam, what the transformative growth of recent years has meant to everyday lives. He is preoccupied with climatic response, local craft and materials, relationship between indoor and outdoor. He too seeks meaning, combining old and new, albeit not in the city but in rural Vietnam. Embedded within Hao’s reading of the zeitgeist, there is a position on the environment. Hao offers an implicit nod to the sustainability movement that has mushroomed in Vietnam since the 2010s. However, his worldview is rooted in the phenomenological, which contrasts with other green architects who rely mostly on technological solutions.
References
Hao, Hoang Thuc and Quang Minh Nguyen. 2016. “Architecture of Happiness—A Treatise.” 2016. FuturArc, 51 (Nov–Dec).
Hao, Hoang Thuc. 2021. “The philosophy of ‘The Happy Architectures’”. TED talk, 25 February. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB641YaAggM | |
Loan, Pham Thuy, and Truong Ngoc Lan. 2017 “Modern Architecture in Vietnam or Vietnamese Modern Architecture,” Docomo Journal, 57; https://docomomojournal.com/index.php/journal/article/view/300
Soon, Tay Kheng. 1996. “Rethinking the City in the Tropics: The Tropical City Concept.” In Tzonis et al., Tropical Architecture.
Soon, Tay Kheng. 1997. “The Architectural Aesthetics of Tropicality.” In Tay Kheng Soon et al., Line, Edge and Shade: The Search for a Design Language in Tropical Asia, Singapore: Page One.
Tzonis, Alexander, Liane Lefaivre and Bruno Stagno (eds). 2001. Tropical Architecture: Critical Regionalism in the Age of Globalization. Chichester: Wiley-Academic.
Yeang, Ken Yeang. 1996. The Skyscraper Bioclimatically Considered: A Design Primer. London: Academy Editions.
