Traveling Architecture. East German Urban Designs in Vietnam

Schwenkel, Christina

doi:10.18352/hcm.467

Cited by 13 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 8 publications

(9 reference statements)

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“…The implementation of this orderly urban vision aims to prevent the emergence of an ugly urban image and maintain urban civility (Harms, 2011;Harms, 2014). Kurfürst (2012) and Labbé (2013) describe this process, which links modernization, urban planning with civility for Hà Nọî, Kaiser (2014) and Schwenkel (2014) for Vinh. Kaiser (2014) and Schwenkel (2014) also take the mobility of urban forms (from Eastern Germany to Vietnam) to reproduce modernity into account.…”

Section: Mobile Urban Forms: Mobility and Urban Planning In Tam Kyùmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mobility, porosity and the peri-urban city in Vietnam

Le¹

2020

Global Studies

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Section: Mobile Urban Forms: Mobility and Urban Planning In Tam Kyùmentioning

confidence: 99%

Mobility, porosity and the peri-urban city in Vietnam

Le¹

2020

Global Studies

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“…The implementation of this orderly urban vision aims to prevent the emergence of an ugly urban image and maintain urban civility (Harms, 2011;Harms, 2014). and Labbé (2013) describe this process, which links modernization, urban planning with civility for Hà Nọî, Kaiser (2014) and Schwenkel (2014) for Vinh. Kaiser (2014) and Schwenkel (2014) also take the mobility of urban forms (from Eastern Germany to Vietnam) to reproduce modernity into account.…”

Section: Mobile Urban Forms: Mobility and Urban Planning In Tam Kyùmentioning

confidence: 99%

Southeast Asian Transformations

2020

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Constructing and reconstructing life worlds of NusantaraPutting on our helmets and, if it is pouring with rain, tent-like gold and silver ponchos, we start our two-wheeler and drive to the end of our crisply paved alley to face the bungalow of our landlord and landlady across the street. They bought our townhouse to rent it out, and keep an eye on us, their tenants, on their regular walks to and from the mosque. Ibu Mar is a retired secretary, who used to work for the accounting department of a mining company. Her husband is still employed and has a fly-in-fly-out job as a technician at an open-cast lignite mine in Kalimantan. Two of their sons are already settled in Jakarta, while their youngest son still lives with them at home. Like women in the kampong, and my neighbour Nani, our industrious landlady Mar has her own business, which she is eager to expand, selling premium ice-cream of a Singaporean brand on the door step to passing school children (and exhausted working mums). Using my down payment of the whole year's rent for the house as is customary, busy construction work started at their house soon after we moved in. Walls are being torn down, doors moved, and the house remodelled to accommodate both the necessary car and the expanding ice-cream business (although while we were there we always went to the back door to get our cold lump of sweetened fat). During our stay, more of our rent money and their time were invested in marrying off the last son, and laying on a splendid reception attended by more than 1000 guests.Facing our landlord's house, we may either turn left or right. If we turn right, we pass bungalows and small residential estates. The street is lined with trees and full of animals: hens looking after their chicks, beautiful cocks showing off, cats moving stealthily about and occasionally a pure bred dog. Javanese ladies in informal batik dresses with their hair uncovered feed the animals. Alongside well-kept gardens and fenced verandas, some plots lie fallow, covered with dense undergrowth and wild banana trees. Jacob calls these semi-wild areas 'chicken forests' as these animals can be seen dashing in and out as we pass by, slowed down by the 'sleeping policemen' that cross the street. Chicken are an important part of the local diet and kept for consumption of their flesh, with chicken feet considered a special delicacy. Cocks are cherished as pets to be admired or as fighting cocks. The fowl run in and out between the well-kept town houses and the neighbouring chicken forest. These patches of semi-wild greenery help maintain a pocket-sized social-ecological system that is a remnant of home gardens in rural areas in times gone by. In addition to the poultry, young men like to keep racing pigeons or songbirds, which are fed and catered for with utmost attention and presented at shows and races at weekends. The young men can often be seen on motor scooters with the birds in cloth-covered birdcages worn like rucksacks, a sight that encapsulates the love

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“…Despite such conditions (or perhaps because of them), tenants have been hesitant to self‐repair (tự làm) in ways that would preserve the structural and infrastructural integrity of the buildings. Although residents have long engaged in improvisational practices to maintain a livable environment within their individual units (Schwenkel :168–170), they have begrudgingly paid mandatory fees for upkeep and repairs of common space. “Why should we have to pay for this?” a man in B5 asked about a communal electric bill and upgrade to the lights in the stairwell.…”

Section: Overflow: Contested Liabilities Of Maintenancementioning

confidence: 99%

Spectacular infrastructure and its breakdown in socialist Vietnam

Schwenkel

2015

American Ethnologist

Self Cite

145

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No material resource and public good is more critical to sustaining urban life than water. During postwar reconstruction in Vietnam, planners showcased urban infrastructure as a spectacular socialist achievement. Water‐related facilities, in particular, held the potential for emancipation and modernity. Despite East German–engineered systems, however, taps remained dry in socialist housing. Lack of water exposed existing hierarchies that undermined the goal of democratic infrastructure yet enabled new forms of solidarity and gendered social practice to take shape in response to the state's failure to meet basic needs. Infrastructural breakdown and neglect thus catalyzed a collective ethos of maintenance and repair as the state shifted responsibility for upkeep to disenchanted tenants. I track these processes in a housing complex in Vinh City, where water signified both the promises of state care and a condition of its systemic neglect. [materiality, infrastructure, socialist modernity, urbanization, decay, maintenance and repair, water, Vietnam]

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Traveling Architecture. East German Urban Designs in Vietnam

Cited by 13 publications

References 8 publications

Mobility, porosity and the peri-urban city in Vietnam

Mobility, porosity and the peri-urban city in Vietnam

Southeast Asian Transformations

Spectacular infrastructure and its breakdown in socialist Vietnam

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