Nous Avons Choisi de Nous Souvenir : œuvres d’Architecture Coloniales Indochinoises au Vietnam comme Vecteurs de Mémoire

Abstract

Similar to other colonial projects, the Statue of Liberty was one of the many examples of the way the French empire wanted to exercise its power through the modification of the landscape in the colony - Indochinese Vietnam. The spatial edification and the enhancement of the built environment were the attempts of the imperial government to imitate French cities. For these reasons, there still exist numerous buildings in modern Vietnam that reflect different aspects of French aesthetics. They become lieux de mémoire because they carry the history and the collective memory of the inhabitants in the colony and also of the Vietnamese citizens today. This paper will examine the Indochinese colonial architectural works as vectors of memory.