Tun Tan Cheng Lock Centre for Architectural and Urban Heritage

DEPARTMENT OF ARCHITECTURE – 50^th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATIONS

Soft Launch of Tun Tan Cheng Lock Centre for Architectural and Urban Heritage (TTCL-Center)

Date: 21 November 2008

Venue: 54 and 56 Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock, Malacca

In the line towards progress, the Department of Architecture has not jettison the awareness of the roots and culture of place. A generous donation from Ms Agnes Tan, the daughter of Tun Tan Cheng Lock, enabled the purchase of two houses along Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock in Malacca. They are now being restored and adaptively re-used for the careful study of conservation, analysis of construction techniques and a close study of architectural culture and heritage. After months of works, the Department of Architecture is organizing a soft launch on 21 November 2008 at 54 and 56 Jalan Tun Tan Cheng Lock, Malacca.

The Centre is envisioned to be a resource center and a field school with facilities for academic exchanges among scholars and students coming from all parts of the world. It is located strategically in the recently declared World Heritage City, Malacca where various civilizations met, blended, and manifested into the cosmopolitan characters of its architecture and urban culture along its history.

(Quoted from Note of the HOD-Architecture)

Urban Planning and Urban Land for Specific Regions in Vietnam

(Sustainable National Land Policy of Asian Countries responding to Long term Impacts, Tokyo-Japan, 2004)

An Institutional Reform- Based Approach to Managing Open-Space in Expanded Hanoi City

The map of “e-Hanoi” is prepared by VIAP (2008) and Research Questions:

1. What should e-Hanoi do to increase greenery areas next periods?

2. How does e-Hanoi manage and protect current open-spaces through the City’s institution system?

I have used terms- e-Hanoi, OPM, O-P, regulatory simplification & adjustment, decision-making restructure & management process to describe several ideals about reform-processes to deal with these issues.

A Miniature Singapore- Live show!

A Singapore has been zoomed out through URA’s models. The city edges were captured by several visits with Great PA and the friends last two years. This imageability could help you,  VNmese town planners and architects form a good perceived environment for your own projects in the future

Enjoy the show!

(by Nikon D200 & Coolpix 5700)

The Chân Mây’s Design Concept

(The National Project, completed in 2004)

Presentation Slides at 6th APRU Conference, Oregon- USA

Re-planning structure and Socializing conservation of “Hanoi Ancient Quarter” towards Sustainable Urban Development in Vietnam.

(Full paper- Presented in: Annual Association of Pacific Rim Universities Conference, 2005. University of Oregon, USA)

Abstract

Hanoi Ancient Quarter called 36 Old Streets Quarter is just recognized as one of National Heritages including hundreds of valued relics from year 1010 to now. Urban development is being changed town structure and caused social problems loosing its initiated identity. To answer questions “What, Why and How?” so the aim of this paper is to discover historical and urban development process of the Ancient Quarter in terms of socio-economic characteristics, town conceptualizations in the past, as well as to review and evaluate social and community’s efforts in last ten years by applying “dots analytic system” (DAS) which based on sustainable urban design models. In order to re-plan structure and socialize preservation works, some key solutions of sustainable urban development and design are proposed in order to positively conserve and develop original image “Ancient Quarter” of Hanoi City towards sustainable urban development in the future

Key words: sustainable urban development and design, urban planning, conservation, socialization of conservation, DAS’s system.

Affordances of Heritage Environment: A Conservation Approach to Hanoi Ancient Quarter in Vietnam

Tuesday, 24 April 2007
3:00 – 4:00 pm

Centre for Advanced Studies in Architecture
Department of Architecture
National University of Singapore

Abstract

Heritage conservation plays an important role above all others in rapidly developing cities, towns and quarters to connect the past with the present as well as protect our roots, historically, culturally, architecturally, socially and so forth. Value of conservation of built environments has been acknowledged and illustrated through numerous instances mostly in developed countries (United Kingdom, Canada, Japan and Singapore…) beneath public and private interest and support. Seemingly, this process, at developing countries, is not easy-going with restoring and rehabilitating historic and ancient quarters to which governments pay attention but lacking necessary capabilities for, whilst other resources, critically, are available inside local communities themselves for improving living conditions by demolishing old constructions (Malacca and Hanoi…) to build up new modern ones relatively.

In recent years, community involvement to preserve and develop Hanoi Ancient Quarter is still a controversial issue beyond seriously worrying conditions of the built environment, urban elements and remaining heritages. The visible reasons, which could be explainable, are the Quarter’s attractiveness involving people in economic, trading activities more than protecting, retaining its cultural and historic heritage values as their behaviors, actions toward perceived spaces and functional properties of the built environment through reciprocal relationships between heritage environment and users.

The aim of this paper, using J. Gibson’s “affordance” term, is to examine significant characteristics of the 36 Old Streets Quarter which support users’ actions, behaviors for urban and architectural preservation works, in other words, conservational potential affordances (CPAs) covering various sub-affordance levels (perceiving, utilizing, sharing (Kytta, 2002: 109) and so forth), as my argument, through social activities that have never been done before. To response to these within outdoor and partly indoor (the sharing spaces) context, semi-structured and key informant (informal) interviews, participant- observation and behavior mapping methods are used to collect qualitative data to explore different affordances of residential blocks- basic heritage units of the Ancient Quarter. The main factual problems, regrettably, are misperceiving and misuse of affordances of the heritage environments, causing consequences as captured today.

After data analysis, a CPAs profile will be constructive to suggest potentiality and availability of affordances of the residential block and its distribution as well. Then, behavior schemata will also figure out social activities regarding use of urban layouts and objects, which constituted the past and present functional properties of 36 Old Streets Quarter. Finally, a heritage conservation program, supposedly, will be implemented to guide people to perceive and use the affordances to gradually adjust presently perceived environments so as to lead to appropriate rehabilitative actions to foster identity and vibrancy of this cultural heritage at level- community initiative.

A Schema for the Conservation of Tube-Houses (Hanoi, Vietnam)

Ngo Minh Hung and Wong Yunn Chii

(Full paper- Presented in: CONSERVATION IN CHANGING SOCIETIES: Heritage development- International Conference 2006, Lueven, Belgium)

Abstract

The city of Hanoi is celebrating its 1000th anniversary in 2010. It is an ancient city with a structure based on both original Vietnamese and French colonial architecture. The tube-house, an ubiquitous typology in its urban context, is a vital built heritage that has been impacted by urbanization, socio-economic changes, and high population density. These changes affected both its architecture and housing function. There are no successful conservation projects of the tube houses and their precincts. This paper proposes schema, as a set of conservation strategies, for this traditional house typology based on its architectural features, urban and social function and land use. It argues that for a sustainable urban development that would retain the character of the city, a staged approach based on community participation and the clarification of the “Inside-to-Outside” intervention is required.