Maintaining characteristics of original landscape of the fringe villages which now shifted into the city as historic urban landscape

Ref.: 327
Key theme: 01 Physical integrity of historic urban landscapes
Date of reception: 05/12/2008

AUTHORS (*Main author)

MINH SON, Nguyen * (Viet Nam) - Institute of Tropical Architect ­ Hanoi Architectural University, km 10 Nguyen Trai road, Thanh Xuan district, Hanoi

ABSTRACT

The historical landscape of urban is characterized not only by the old quarters but also the suburban ancient villages. They originally were the villages of farmers or craftsmen whose products had ever been very necessary for the life in the adjacent city. Due to enlargement of the city, these villages now are within urban precinct and being influent by urbanization: cultivation land become urban area, traditional production disappear, traditional rural houses give way to new urban style architecture and so on. Almost spaces of the villages today are now being compacted or isolated within the material space of the city by specific administrative demarcation and by inertia of history.

The historical landscape in existing cities include ancient, old quarters. Besides, another typical part is existed, they are fringe villages which now shifted into inner-city. These used to be pure agricultural, craft or service adjacent to the city. Being within the city, these villages now are affected by urbanization: cultivation land are contracted, traditional production and employment are disappear, traditional rural houses give way to new urban style architecture. Almost spaces of the villages today are now being compacted or isolated within the space of the city by specific administrative demarcation and by inertia of history
Hanoi city includes pastoral sceneries which took shape during history of development. They are architectural images of community presenting via lifestyle and village economic spontaneous development and landscape covering these elements
- Urban landscape with the villages inside shows the transference of community structure from the past to present. The villages also provide traditional materials for modern urban morphology. However, in long term, all of this need to be adjusted in a right way not to become something imperfection within the city.
- Almost village precinct, housing architecture or other works within in the villages were made of impermanent materials with simple technique which might not meet large scale improvement or reconstruction of them, accordingly. Due to this fact, the popularly appearance of new works with hybrid architecture replacing the original ones creates a new but disorder landscape.
- The unsustainable landscape and unprompted maintenance might cause destruction of historic landscape environment and pose the challenge in combining with urban landscape of a modern city.
- The value to be identified here is the diversification of landscape structure which is the unique and selective element serving for harmonizing different types of historic landscapes in a unified perfect whole. The value also shows historic frequency happened during the time.
Therefore, it is essential to develop regulations and guidelines on maintaining, improving and developing village landscape within urban landscape as historic urban landscape.
g. Conclusion:
Facing the attack of modern development, traditional Vietnamese village landscape is fragile, posing the risk of being disappeared and overwhelmed. In conclusion, we must respect, take a full awareness its values and provide methods for improving and uninterruptedly developing the overall urban landscape.

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