Antidote to Burnout

Looking for international healthcare in Saigon

The building below is around the corner from our house in the Phú Nhuận District of HCMC, on Phan Dăng Lưu Street.

We have now lived in this neighborhood for 3.5 years.  Early on, I noticed the building and decided that this could be the clinic we could use for emergency medical care if necessary.  To my eyes, there were numerous clues that said this was an international medical clinic:

• the word "Care" 
• the Vietnamese words "bác sĩ", which I knew meant doctor 
• the photo of a white-coated doctor
• the Vietnamese words "bệnh viện" which mean hospital

A while back, my wife needed to have our ADSL modem fixed, so she said she would take it over to the "Care Hospital".  Huh? 

What I didn't see and understand were the Vietnamese words "máy tính" which means computer.  This is a computer hospital.

I am now searching again for an emergency healthcare clinic -- probably like Columbia International Healhcare Clinic further down Phan Dăng Lưu Street.

 

Dancing in the Park in Ho Chi Minh City

In most places around the world, governments close city parks when the sun sets.  In Gia Định Park in the Phú Nhuận District of HCMC, the park is lit up at night and many citizens crowd the park to relax and take part in many activities, including dancing.

In some cases, organizations provide an audio loudspeaker system and play ballroom dance music at park pavilions. In other cases, individuals bring in their own sound systems and set up to provide dance instruction for a small fee.  I am told they are set up in the park each night, but Saturday night is the big night.

The park can be reached from downtown by traveling north (one-way) on Đường Nguyễn Kiệm, then turn left at Đường Hoàng Minh Giám.

HCMC Building 2

This building houses the Raffles International College at 117 Nguyễn Văn Trỗi street in Ho Chi Minh City. This Raffles is a branch of the Raffles College of Design and Commerce based in Sydney, Australia.

The building is setback from the street on an interior lot blocked from the street by an older building.  This is a practice that international building developers would not consider, but it is common in Saigon.

The colored films on selected windows add a design touch to the building, which otherwise would be a standard international style building.

The most beautiful café or coffeehouse in Vietnam

My obsession with large cafés in HCMC continues -- I have now found the MOST beautiful cafe in Ho Chi Minh City, the LaDo Café.  The location, however, is as far out of the inner city as it can get without going across the outer belt highway of QL 1A west of Saigon.  The address is 101/18 Gò Dầu Street in the Tân Qúy ward of Tân Phú district.  I am surprised Kevin at SaigonNezumi hasn't found it first since he spends a lot of time in that district.

The location is just too far out and hidden away, which is unfortunate because this truly is a modernist masterpiece in a beautiful garden.  I am told the owner and designer is an architect, and I would love to talk with him someday.

I didn't have my camera with me on this visit, so some fuzzy old iPhone pics are going to have to cover the design for now.  The occasion was an outing with friends from my office, which is what visits to cafés in Việt Nam are all about -- socializing.

We get by in a mixture of Vietnamese and English.  The usual beverage of choice for women is a blended  fruit drink.

Lado Cafe is one of the largest cafes I have been to, and it is unfortunate we were one of the only groups there on a Saturday afternoon.  Given its out-of-the-way location, it is also much quieter than most cafes, and the music is played at at a reasonable level that allows good conversation.  While we were there, a few Chistmas songs were played within the mix of western and Vietnamese tunes.

There are two garden sides split with a center pavilion.

Most seating is at the garden terraces.

The selection of plant material complements the architecture (or vice versa) very well and is very deliberate in how it is planted and maintained.  There is nothing random to the choices and means of planting -- everything is selected to work together in a very pleasing composition.

The water in the pools is deliberately stagnant so that they have a beautiful green color.  Yellow architectonic elements like walls and frames are used to unify the composition.

Building Construction Week 9

This will probably be the last post on this subject for the next two or three months.  The site is empty now -- this past week, the pile testing contractor finished testing the third pile and then took away all the equipment and concrete blocks.

If you look closely, you can see the tops of the three .75-meter diameter concrete piers.

The evaluation of the test results will now either confirm the foundation design or require changes. Normally, it will take some time to sort all this out and then the pile contractor will show up with a couple of rigs and finish drilling all the piers.

HCMC Building 1

I am beginning to see more interesting buildings designed by Vietnamese architects, in addition to the many houses I see.  Here is the first in a new series:

Getting beyond modernism with this experiment in window treatment.  It will be interesting to see over time how well this is maintained.

This new building is along the newly-widened Đường (streeet) Nguyễn Văn Trỗi.  Here is the building with a bit more context:

Building Construction Week 8

Jon over at the blog It's the final word commented on last week's posting about construction that I "must be the only man in Saigon who actually enjoys having a large scale construction project behind his house..." Yes, it's true -- I enjoy having a construction project behind my house because I have a ringside seat for the day-to-day workings of a construction site.  Architects don't get enough exposure to construction on the job -- I am learning some new things, particularly about construction methods common in Vietnam but not so common in America.  The current construction activities are still fairly tame -- I might change my mind when the construction workers are staring in my window and blowing dust my way in a year or so.

This week the crane operator and rigging crew set up the third frame for testing the last concrete drilled pier.

This next week they will haul all of the frame materials and concrete blocks away, and the site will be quiet for a couple of months while the structural engineer evaluates the test results and the foundation contractor calculates the length of drilled piers required to complete the building and order materials accordingly.

Building Construction Week 7

All of the big concrete blocks that had been brought to the site were put to use this past week as the pile testing contractor set up a frame and piled the blocks on.

The frame was set up so that the center of the load of blocks came to bear on measuring equipment that recorded the load as well as the settlement of the concrete pier, if any.  The load was maintained on the pile for four days.

There are three concrete piers to be tested -- the contractor is moving on to the second one today, unpiling all the blocks and resetting the frame over the second pile.

Café Society in Vietnam -- Large Coffeehouses

I know I am enamored with the design of the large coffeehouses in HCMC, and I love the cà phê.  But I am especially interested in the social usage of the large coffeehouses by Vietnamese.  Any morning or evening will find these cafés full of people lingering over coffee.

America just does not have a similar custom, and there are none of these kind of venues in the USA.  Americans might stop into the local Starbucks in the morning and read the newspaper in a half-hour's time, but more often than not, Americans get their coffee to go.  In Saigon, citizens spend a few hours lingering over one coffee or fruit drink.  The real reason they are there is to socialize in a comfortable setting.  Saturday and Sunday mornings are the busiest times -- all of the cafes large and small are crowded with groups of people.  And I said they spend a few hours -- maybe two on the average.  When I visit these cafes with my friend, we always spend 2.5 hours socializing.

The range of groups run from large families with small children on down to couples.  You rarely see a lone person in these large cafes on the weekend mornings.  I often see a couple of couples together socializing. While American couples might go to a restaurant together in an evening, Vietnamese couples meet at the cafe in the morning.  And this is not Japan -- these groups are almost always mixed male and female.

I think people flock to the cafes because they are very comfortable places to relax and talk, compared to the typical Vietnamese household.  These coffeehouses are much quieter than the houses on the narrow lanes, and the cafes often feature very good Vietnamese and western music played at a level where you can still talk.

It is surprising to me that there are so many of these large cafes like Miền Đồng Thảo Café around Ho Chi Minh City.  Since cà phê dá (iced coffee) runs about 30 to 35,000 VN đồng (US$2), they are certainly not cheap by Vietnamese standards. I usually buy coffee for 6,000 VND ($.34) on a workday morning at my local café.  I asked my friend what he thought the average monthly income might be for most of the people in this cafe this last Saturday morning, and he figured 8 to 10 million VND (US$560/month).  That represents the middle class in Vietnamese cities like HCMC.  My friend recognized people he knows such as stock brokers and advertising people.  The middle class continues to grow in Vietnam in spite of the worldwide economic crisis.

But this cafe society extends to all levels of economic strata in Vietnamese life.  While the middle and upper stratas of society congregate in these large cafes, lower stratas (such as myself on weekdays) meet and socialize in the smaller neighborhood cafés.  And the majority of people all around Vietnam simply gather at the sidewalk (literally) cafés.  I often see the same large groups of people at the same street places as I walk to the bus each morning.

Since café socializing is such an important part of Vietnamese life in the cities, I am dismayed that tourists or expats rarely make it to these wonderful coffeehouses.  There are very few of these kind of places downtown, and the coffeehouses downtown are like Starbucks back in the USA, except that they are enterprizing Vietnamese versions of Starbucks like Highlands Coffee (there are no Starbucks in Vietnam yet).  Therefore tourists that simply satisfy their craving for coffee in the usual international forms like espresso, missing the real Vietnamese experience of relaxation and socializing in a very beautiful comfortable setting.

The particular café featured in this posting is in the district between downtown and the airport, Phú Nhuận.

Located at 221A Đường (Street) Nguyễn Trọng Tuyền where it crosses the railroad tracks, you leave your motorbike at the garage at the street and walk 20 meters along the railroad tracks to the entrance.

This coffeehouse is owned by the same company that owns Du Miên Café at 48/9A Hồ Biểu Chánh in Quận Phú Nhuận.  While Du Miên is a very modernist design well integrated with the landscape design, this cafe is a mash of different styles around a well-composed landscape.

You don't see any people in the photo above, but there are at least 200 in the building in the background and behind me.

These cafes in Vietnam are definitely not accessible to physically handicapped people, of which there are a high percentage in Vietnam.  There are multiple levels on the ground floor, accessible itself up a flight of stairs at the entry, and two floors above that without an elevator.

This is such a civilized way to enjoy the company of people and see and be seen by people. This is my favorite aspect of life in Viet Nam.  Thanks to my friend Toàn for introducing me to this cafe as well as many others I have enjoyed in HCMC.

HCMC House 12

Back to a series focusing on individual modernist houses in Ho Chi Minh City.

This house is an interesting experiment in warping the usual rectilinear frame of Vietnamese modernist houses.

Vietnamese architects spend time reviewing site lines to make sure that design elements beyond the facade work well in the composition -- in this case the roof terrace trellis is an integral part of the warping of lines and fits right in, taking the eye back from the facade.

As is usual in Vietnamese houses, the ground floor facade has nothing to do with the design above.  Ground floor facades are strictly commercial, and this one will eventually be covered with a commercial treatment that fits it particular use.  When the typical Vietnamese house is only 4 meters wide (13.1 feet), there is no room for a separate entry to the house.  These houses are typically entered through the commercial store to a stairway in the back.

An anthropomorphic modernist house in Vietnam

I am not sure the designer intended to form an anthropomorphic image in the design of the house below.

But it certainly comes off that way, especially when driving by and not necessarily looking at the architecture.  The ground floor is not part of the composition so far. We will wait and see how the ground floor will either detract or remain neutral from the image presented above.  It cannot enhance the image owing to the lack of symmetrically below.

This house is in a new urban area on Hoàng Quốc Việt street southeast of the Phú Mỹ Hưng development in South Saigon.

Building Construction Week 4

Although the photo below doesn't look like it (end of the week), there was a lot of work on the site in back of my house every evening this week as the foundation contractor drilled and poured concrete for two more 20-meter deep piers spread around the site.

Then over the past four nights, a constant line of trucks pulled out all of the foundation contractor's equipment and brought in all of the concrete blocks that you see on the site.

Over the next week, I expect that workers will erect frames over the three drilled concrete piers and then load them up with the concrete blocks to test the settlement of the piers.  Based upon this information, the structural engineer will verify his calculations and finish the structural design.  This information will also verify or refine the cost estimate for constructing the foundations.

Used car from California in Vietnam?

Walking by a car dealer on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai street the other day, I was struck by a California license plate on one of the cars.

I know they sell imported used cars in Vietnam, but such a new looking car?  It's also possible that they might be rotating the license plate between new cars to give them a sales edge with California cachet.

Building Construction Week 3

I skipped the second week of construction behind my house because nothing progressed except for delivery of materials.

In this third week, ironworkers formed rebar cages to be dropped into a bore hole to reinforce foundation piers. This weekend they drilled the first borehole with a diameter of between half to one meter to a depth of 20 meters.  Watching the nature of the soil brought up, I noticed that the soil noticeably changed at that last meter with solid clay compared with the muck brought up for the first 19 meters.

The first six meters of the borehole has a steel casing.  The remainder of the hole is stabilized by pumping a bentonite slurry into the hole, which keeps out ground water and puts pressure on the side wall to keep it from falling in.  Then the reinforcing bar cage was dropped into the hole in three sections and welded together.

Tomorrow it is likely they will pump concrete down a pipe installed within the rebar cage.  The concrete will displace the slurry from the bottom up.

New modernist houses in San Francisco

I have said before that Vietnamese architects are far ahead of architects in the remainder of the world in evolving modern architecture for houses.  They have been at it for decades.  While there are thousands of excellent modernist houses in Saigon, there are very few in San Francisco, for example.  But architects there are breaking out and the photo below illustrates a typical new house.  This house is on a standard 25-foot wide lot, while the standard Vietnamese lot is usually 13 to 20 feet wide.  Notice the very interesting gate.

This photo is from the popular San Francisco real estate blog SocketSite^TM,  This house if for sale as shown on the website 465 Hoffman Avenue, and the architect is Group 41.

The frisky Vietnamese press

Anyone who thinks the Vietnamese press is suppressed might think otherwise after reading the article at this link:

http://www.thanhniennews.com/healthy/?catid=8&newsid=48173

WARNING:  This is not XXX material, but it is definitely adult in nature.

Building Construction 1

Construction is starting on the large lot behind my house.  Since I have a ringside seat for all the action, I will post progress on the site weekly.

This week, construction equipment and materials dribbled in slowly each night.  Since trucks can travel on inner city HCMC streets at night, deliveries by large trucks are made at night.

It is likely that the foundation construction contractor will start drilling de-watering wells to lower the ground water in the site area so that excavation can start later.  They will also drive one or two piles and load them with large blocks of concrete for a period of time to test the load-bearing capacity of the pile given the depth to which they were able to drive the piles.

Building one's personal brand

I have been thinking a lot lately about personal branding.  Tom Peters, the author of the best-selling book "In Search of Excellence" (1982) also wrote a book called "The Brand You 50" (1999), stating " The white collar job as now configured is doomed. ...So what's the trick? There's only one: DISTINCTION.  Or as we call it ... turning yourself into a brand ... Brand You."

Internet techology has now given us a myriad of ways to build and maintain one's personal brand or image in the world, with web pages, blogs, video sites, podcasts, social sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn, and Twitter.

40 years ago in the late 1960's when I was an architecture student, I thought (as did many of us in those egalitarian days) I would succeed strictly on merit.  Appearances would count for nothing.  It didn't take too much time out of the univerity to figure out this was wrong.  Appearances are a form of communicating merit and therefore are central to succeeding based on merit.  In today's world, it is much easier to communicate and present merit, but it helps to be purposeful in building image.

Yesterday, on Earth Day in America, I wrote a message to one of my Vietnamese colleagues in Ho Chi Minh City recommending that she emulate Michelle Kaufmann, the foremost American architect and designer bringing green design to American homes and families.  I want to share that message with you:

Dear ___________,

Have a productive Earth Day today!

Since you sent to me the link to the Smart House at the Museum of Science and Industy in Chicago, I have been catching up online with the work of Michelle Kaufmann, the architect.  I told you that we had worked together for a large firm in San Francisco, KMD Architects.  She had been working with Frank Gehry in Los Angeles when my boss asked me to call her and send her an employment proposal to come and work for us in San Francisco, and she did.  But she was a very energetic and ambitious young woman, so I knew we would not be able to keep her for long.  After two years with us, she formed her own firm and has been extremely successful ever since.  She also hired away from us a young architect whom I had worked closely with to be the president of her company.

I am sending these links to you because I think Michelle is a great role model for you.  I know I would have accomplished more in my life if I had known of such role models when I was younger.  So please pay particular attention to Michelle's passions and what she has accomplished with a lot of energy and an outgoing fearless personality.  I think that you have many of the qualities that Michelle has, and that you can accomplish great things yourself in pursuing your passions.

First of all, remember the concept of "branding".  We usually think of branding as applied to products.  But branding is also very important for highly-effective individuals.  Everything that you do creates your "brand" in the eyes of the people you work with and encounter in life.  So you need to reflect on yourself and understand what your passions are and what you want to convey to others.  Then you need to act in everything that you do to build the brand -- that positive reputation.

Building your brand means paying careful attention to the design of what you produce and how these things are presented.  Look at Michelle's blog for example:
http://blog.michellekaufmann.com

She uses a consistent design and color scheme in everything that she does.  Notice that she writes very well and puts out ideas that can help other people meet their goals, in this case of leading more environmentally productive lives.  Notice also that although her education was in architecture, she brings together many related disciplines to move towards her overall goal of "green living".  She is very good at landscape architecture, interior design, product design, furniture design, and graphics design.  She has also produced a series of videos (very professionally done) that present innovative but small doable ideas for green living.  The videos are also available for subscription on YouTube.

On her company website,
http://www.mkd-arc.com/homes/
she uses the same graphic motif and images as used on her blog.  Michelle started her architecture firm because she wanted to buy an environmentally sustainable house for her family, but could not find what she was looking for.  So she developed this idea to design a house as a product that would be fabricated in a factory and then brought to the site to be assembled.  There have been other attempts to build factory-built (or pre-fabricated houses), but none of them were as beautiful and environmentally sustainable as her designs.  She built one of her first prefabricated houses for Sunset Magazine, a widely-read western-living magazine in California, which brought a lot of attention in a very short time to Michelle and her new firm.  Since then she has designed several different house designs for prefabrication and many have been constructed.  She also designs custom homes using prefabicated elements.  The house shown on the following web page is one of my favorites, and notice what a pure modernist design it is.
Santa Barbara House

The use of technology is very important in extending your brand awareness, and Michelle uses the available tools very effectivly.  In addition to her blog and the company website online, she also uses YouTube and Twitter to constantly move her ideas out to interested people and attract new contacts.  Obviously, these tools are only effective if you have something of value to say or present.  It amazes me how Michelle is able to communicate almost everyday several times a day very interesting tips and ideas on her Twitter feed.  I enjoy keeping up with her ideas this way.  I know that Michelle is an exceptional person and has boundless energy and ability to easily project ideas and her personality.  The rest of us may be able to accomplish a fraction of what she does, but that is what makes her such an effective role model for us.

Best wishes for you,
-- Mel

More beautiful cafés (coffee houses) in HCMC

My colleague, KTS Trà Giang introduced me to two beautiful cafés in Ho Chi Minh City this weekend. Architects in Vietnam are addressed as "KTS", an abbreciation for Kiến Trúc Sư, the Vietnamese words for architect.  Cafés in Việt Nam are much larger and more comfortable versions of coffee houses in America.

The first was the Elip Café at 530/23 Đường Thống Nhất, Phường 16, Q. Gò Vấp, TPHCM.  Elip is a Vietnamese adaption of the word ellipse, and the basic layout of the cafe is an ellipse, an oval where tables are laid out under a bamboo canopy with a oval pond in the middle open to the sky.  The form is an innovative use of bamboo in a complex geometry.

The entry is set back from Thong Nhat Street by about 30 meters, so it is too easy to miss.  At the entry, a ramp leads to the parking garage below while the pedestrian entry heads up stairs to the left.

The entry path is by stepping-stones across a pond with small fountains and beautiful plant life.

This is a modernist architecture that evolves from the use of one material: bamboo.  This architecture is in line with the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron as well as Peter Zumthor, both firms which have been awarded the Pritzker Prize, with Zumthor's awarded just a few days ago.  These architects study and mold one material into beautiful forms.  In this case, it is the way bamboo has been structurally put together to compose complex forms.

The roofing material, however, was a very poor choice of red asphalt shingles, since this pliable material accentuates the unevenness of the bamboo structure.

We visited on one of the hottest days of the year (a record was set for HCMC at 36 C. this day), so we chose to sit in a "tearoom" upstairs with a zen feeling.

Since this was elevated, it caught the breezes through the bamboo and we remained cool.

There is an air-conditioned seating area available below the tearoom.  The coffee and other drinks and ice cream selections were normal for this type of cafe (18,000 VND, a little over $1, for cà phê đá, iced coffee).  As usual, I feel very fortunate to live in a land where coffee and culture, especially architecture, are revered and experienced daily.

That is not smoke in the photo above -- it is misting cooling water.

The other cafe is quite different but equally beautiful for its setting.  Americans are very familiar with the small coffee shops attached to large bookstores such as Borders or Barnes & Noble.  Similarly, this cafe is run by a large bookstore similar in size and selection to a Barnes & Noble, but occupies a full floor above the two floors of the Ph­­uong Nam (PNA) Bookstore at  3 Đường Nguyễn Oanh in the Gò Vấp district between Đường Phám Văn Chí and Đường Quang Trung.  This cafe is huge, with many tables in differing settings, as well as an outdoor terrace.  Books are spread around in bookcases close to the tables for casual reading.

In this case, it's the graphic color scheme and consistent patterns that make the design.  Since the seating is much more comfortable than most cafes, one lingers in this cafe for hours, reading books that one might drop down into the bookstore to buy later.  Popular singers take the stage on Friday evenings for live performances.

The enclosing glass walls are modernist in crisp detailing.

And the landscaping is well coordinated with the architecture.

There were several large tables of students comparing notes on the Saturday lunchtime we were there, as well as lots of people with laptop computers taking advantage of the free wireless internet service.  Although the prices were average for cafes of this type in HCMC, the comfortable setting and air-conditioning on a very hot day made the setting perfect for students on a budget.

The Gò Vấp district is beyond the airport from downtown, and foreigners are very few out here.  But cafes such as this are well worth the trip.  The #3 bus makes an almost straight line out towards these two cafes from District One downtown.

Design Touches 9

This park bench out in the Phu My Hung area of South Saigon (District 7 of HCMC) is a very interesting design, even if it is not very comfortable.

We didn't spend much time sitting on this bench -- we quickly moved to the grass against a tree to support our backs.

Some designer exercised some inventiveness, though.