Designing the immediate for the emerging middle class: Challenges of the housing sector in Vietnam.

INTRODUCTION

Vietnam is considered a developing country, located in Southeast Asia - Indochinese Peninsula - with an approximate population of 100 million inhabitants - ten times that of Portugal - and an equivalent area of 329.3 thousand km² - 3.5 times that of Portuguese territory.
Since 1986, the country has adopted an economic policy called renovation - Đổi Mới - transforming its socioeconomic system from central planning to a market-oriented economy. This reform has brought significant socioeconomic achievements, with an average annual GDP growth of about 7% in the last two decades and a decrease in the incidence of poverty from 58% to 14.7%. Currently, with about 35.7% of its population living in urban areas, it is expected that by 2045 the percentage of urban population will exceed the rural population.
It is in this context that we reflect on the challenges of the residential sector in modern Vietnam and contribute, with the vision of an Architect, to the construction of habitable, safe and sustainable spaces.

ARCHITECTURAL CHALLENGES FOR AN EMERGING MIDDLE CLASS

The advent of the 1986 socioeconomic reform - Đổi Mới - gradually changed, in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the communist ideal to an individualistic, capitalist, and market economy-based rationalism, with a strong expression in urbanization and consequently in the ways of making architecture.
This new modernity brought a sense of progress that questioned the Soviet-based tradition and past. The new urban population, of rural origin, with principles and ways of life still aligned with the agrarian values of the time, embraced this new modernity with a strong enthusiasm for Western references, technology, man's dominion over nature, and the speed of change. Progress and the improvement of living conditions are seen as a new world, of rapid search and consumption, without time for reflection or enjoyment.
This progress translates into new forms of work, consumer credit, access to information - which was previously inaccessible -, discovery of other cultures, other ways of life and being. As a result, a new class emerges. The middle class - impossible to reveal before 1986 due to communism.
Vietnam's middle class is one of the fastest growing in Southeast Asia today. This class is going through a rapid phase of "universalization" influenced by the values of Western social reality, playing a decisive role in tastes, attitudes, and ambitions. The city and architecture, in addition to having a preponderant role, are part of this change and have the Architect as a driving agent.
These socioeconomic changes take place in a frenetic environment, with expectations of immediate responses at the urban and architectural level. The result is awaited impatiently to the detriment of the method. The immediate is valued to the detriment of reflection. Solutions are mimicked without regard to quality criteria. The Vietnamese middle class tries, in every way, to reverse the lost time and deprivation it had from this new world.
And it is here, in this phase of discovering the new world, that the Architect plays a role of elementary importance, guaranteeing the quality of the design of spaces, prioritizing the inhabitant as a generating factor of space, reflecting in the architectural design their understanding of the genius loci.
It is urgent to understand this new middle class, in terms of their habits and expectations, and to provide a solid architectural design that embodies the tropicality of the region, in a holistic process between all the stakeholders.
It will be up to the Architect to guide and help these new inhabitants, based on their experience and local knowledge of the uses and customs.
A practical and emerging example comes to mind, through the need to design quickly and frantically for this social class, the lack of reflection on residential design, with inhospitable solutions and without spatial quality criteria, where construction is valued instead of Architecture.
The Vietnamese, like the Portuguese, are used to living among different spatial spheres of privacy and relationships with the outside. When designing a dwelling, the intra-spatial relationships in the interior-exterior binomial are crucial, not only because of the characteristics inherited by the Vietnamese rural generations and their relationship with the immediate exterior, but also because of the tropical dynamics that the climate offers.
The spatial quality is greatly increased with the introduction of the exterior into the social and proximity space, raising the habitat to levels of comfort characteristic of a Western middle class.

CONCLUSION

The emergence and rapid growth of the middle class in Vietnam has had a significant development in the country's socioeconomic scenario in recent decades. This factor, combined with the speed of responses needed, means that various mechanisms of making architecture are ignored or dispensed with.
The Architect and their vast experience are essential so that architectural quality is valued and the level of modus vivendi that this class aspires to is substantially increased.
To this end, it is essential to understand the habits of this new class and provide a solid architectural design that embodies the tropicality of the region in a holistic process between all the stakeholders. The quality of the spatial relationships between the interior and the exterior is crucial, and the architect must prioritize the inhabitant as a generating factor of space, reflecting the genius loci in the act of designing.