In Hanoi, Vietnam, French colonial houses threaten to collapse

"When I was a child, I remember it was a magnificent house," the 47-year-old told AFP, contemplating the 1930s building he lives in, in the Art Deco style mixed with Vietnamese elements.

Now the walls of the facade are scratched with cracks, tiles are detached from the roof, and inside, the wooden stairs have warped under the weight of years and humidity.

Several hundred houses which testify to the colonial past of the former capital of French Indochina, almost a century old, threaten to return to dust, for lack of renovation, or political will to preserve them.

Their residents, who live in cramped conditions, at the mercy of humidity and outside noise, will have to move if the situation does not improve, due to the risk of collapse, the architects have warned.

Despite his attachment to the place, Nguyen Manh Tri decided to soon leave the old dilapidated building to settle with his wife and their two children in a modern apartment in Hanoi.

Risks of collapse

"We can't get out of this situation," he said.

Yet it was a "romantic" place, he recalls.

Today, the facade of some colonial houses are hidden behind cafes, noodle restaurants or fashion boutiques, in the bustling urbanism of the Vietnamese capital.

Most of these buildings were built by the French, but many others were built by local architects to house their wealthier compatriots during the colonial era.

When the colonial occupier left in 1954, the communist government seized thousands of them to transform them into offices, and, for the others, demanded that the owners share them with poor families who were able to settle there.

Some homeowners continue to cling to their history-filled walls, despite the harsh conditions, not knowing how long their roof will last.

"I've lived here all my life, so I don't want to move anywhere else," says Hoang Chung Thuy, 65, who shares the three-story colonial building with ten other households, a seafood restaurant, a clothes and a tea counter.

Without the agreement of her neighbors upstairs, she cannot repair the crumbling walls, but swears loyalty to the house built by her grandparents.

The problem is that these buildings "are at risk of decay and collapse", explains Tran Huy Anh, of the Association of Hanoi Architects.

Million Dollar Renovation

"Those built at the beginning of the 20th century...need constant renovation and maintenance every 20 or 30 years, not later," he insists.

In 2015, two people died in the collapse of a house built in 1905, in which 20 people lived.

The authorities took preservation measures in 2013, but due to a lack of clear will, a large part of the colonial-era houses were razed, according to Ahn.

In April, the city of Hanoi announced its intention to put 600 houses up for sale, before retracting a few days later.

After several about-faces, the municipality seems determined to protect its heritage, and at the beginning of the year placed around 1.200 houses from the colonial era on a heritage safeguard list.

She has also set herself the objective of renovating 60 by 2025. But her project is coming up against the long discussions to be held with residents to convince them to move, given the scale of the work which requires empty housing. .

It took ten years for his first million-dollar renovation project to begin.

Pham Tuan Long, in charge of the management of the central district of Hoan Kiem in Hanoi, and an architect by profession, assures that Hanoi is determined to restore the luster of its old houses.

“We try to preserve the original elements and architectural values ​​as much as possible by using traditional materials and renovation methods,” he says.