I first photographed these houses in the Bình Thạnh District of TP. Hồ Chí Minh nine months ago, as shown here. These houses are on the 14-lane Đường Điện Biên Phủ leading to the Hà Nội Highway northeast away from Sài Gòn.
It appeared to me that these houses had been recently constructed since there was still finish construction occuring on the sidewalk in front of the houses. I took the photograph because these houses were ostentatious in the stripmall-like setting in which they are placed along the highway, and they definitely offended my modernist sensitivities even as I took pleasure in the workmanship and texture of the classical detailing. The light fixtures hanging off the side of the left-hand house are for a huge billboard, which might be the real reason the house was built. Each of these houses is 6-meters wide and about 20 meters deep, making for a large side wall surface.
I hadn't returned to this neighborhood for some time, and was surprised this month to see that the right hand house had been covered with an equally ugly commercial facade for the Southern Bank.
You might think I would applaud this facade for its modernist tendencies, but this is commercial architecture imported from the drab modern cities of China. This facade is as much out of place in the the truly modernist architecture of TPHCM as the classical facade of the left-hand house.
