In addition to the series on modernist HCMC Houses, this is the first posting in a series on design touches -- small design items that exhibit the above average design sense of HCMC people.
This is a normal small convenience store -- pretty standard stuff -- a stall at the bottom of a house:
Compare that with this small convenience store set up in the front yard of a house at 50A Nguyen Đinh Chieu in the Phú Nhuân District of HCMC.
I walk a few blocks every day to get here and order a cà phê sua đá, a Vietnamese iced espresso with condensed milk -- it tastes like a chocolate milk shake, and is very refreshing in the heat of lunch time. I buy a bánh mi thit (french baguette with pâté, lunch meats, and pickled vegetables) first at the vendor stand just down the street, and eat it at the convenience store table along with the cà phê.
I like to go a bit out of my way to get here because it is such a comfortable place, with nice design touches and light.
Note the vents in the fascia panel and the front door -- someone made a very conscious design choice to incorporate the square logo over a background of wavy lines. This is not your normal vegetation-inspired decoration.
Similarly, in the house door and windows, wavy orange designs are incorporated into the grills to add a nice design touch to these elements.
And note also the use of strong accent colors -- red and translucent blue. Someone with some strong design sense made these decisions, and it is encouraging to find a higher level of this kind of design sense in Viet Nam. Of course I recognize that these kind of decisions are easier to make in a place like HCMC where the craftsmen can be easily found to fabricate one's ideas fairly inexpensively. Some might say that this is all too much in a very small space, but to me it all works together to provide a very comfortable and exciting place to be.
