In my book Southern Vietnamese Modernist Architecture (2020), I discussed Vietnamese identity as it applied to the Vietnamese modernist architecture of the mid-twentieth century. In my research, I had seen several references to the need to include Vietnamese identity in the new modernist architecture the Vietnamese architects were developing. But I could find no attempts to put this concept into words, and I resigned myself to the need to do so in my book.

From my own study of Vietnamese traditional architecture, I determined that Vietnamese identity is expressed in their modernist architecture as complexity, balanced by restraint in the overall composition.

Since I am a westerner rather than Vietnamese, I have been very uncomfortable about doing this. I had hoped that I could eventually find writing by a Vietnamese architect that either confirmed my ideas about Vietnamese identity, or straightened me out with a Vietnamese explanation. When Phạm Phú Vinh published his book Poetic Significance : Sài Gòn mid-century modernist architecture in 2022, he essentially confirmed my ideas and provided a more comprehensive explanation for the identity expressed in the architecture.

Phạm Phú Vinh’s book (ISBN 9781087943374) is available internationally (not in Vietnam) at all major online bookstores.