Culture Talk

Hanoi's French colonial buildings: heritage, or a reminder we don't need?

I'm an architecture student in Hanoi and this keeps coming up in studio. The Opera House, the old villas in the French Quarter, the yellow ministry buildings. Tourists love them. Some older people I know have mixed feelings, which I understand.

My view, so far: buildings don't choose who built them. Vietnamese workers built them, Vietnamese families have lived in them for decades, and many have been adapted in very Vietnamese ways, with extra floors, shophouses, balconies full of plants. That layering is our history too.

But I also see villas being knocked down for towers every year, and nobody protests because they are 'French'. So maybe the colonial question is a convenient excuse for developers.

Curious how other formerly colonised countries handle this. Do you protect these buildings, ignore them, or reuse them?