Nhiều công trình kiến trúc lớn được xây dựng trong thời kỳ này nằm rải rác ở một diện tích khá rộng của Hà Nội như Phủ Toàn quyền (Phủ Chủ tịch nay); Bắc Bộ phủ (Nhà khách Chính phủ nay); cầu Long Biên, Nhà hát lớn Hà Nội, Chợ Ðồng Xuân… cho đến giờ gần như vẫn còn nguyên vẹn Việc du nhập kiến trúc Pháp vào Hà Nội đã làm thay đổi qui mô, đường nét nghệ thuật, kết cấu kỹ thuật, vật liệu xây dựng truyền thống. Từ những nguyên liệu làm nhà chủ yếu bằng tre, nứa, lá, gỗ, gạch, ngói…

Chợ Đồng Xuân

Hà Nội thời kỳ này đã bắt đầu biết tới những bản vẽ thiết kế xây dựng, được làm quen với các loại vật liệu xây dựng mới như xi măng, cốt thép… Mặc dù vậy, các công trình kiến trúc Pháp lại được thiết kế rất phù hợp với khí hậu cũng như điều kiện sống của người Hà Nội và hoàn toàn mang một dáng dấp riêng biệt Theo đánh giá của các chuyên gia trong ngành, đến nay kiến trúc Pháp ở Hà Nội vẫn đẹp, tiêu biểu cho hình thức kiến trúc của một thời đã qua với hệ thống hạ tầng kỹ thuật, cơ cấu công trình phục vụ đáp ứng có bản nhu cầu sử dụng của người dân thời đó. Kiến trúc sư Nguyễn Ðình Toàn, Phó Viện trưởng Viện Kiến trúc cho rằng: Hà Nội hiện còn rất nhiều công trình kiến trúc Pháp tốt, có giá trị kiến trúc, lịch sử, văn hóa cần được gìn giữ, bảo tồn. Ðã đến lúc Hà Nội phải kiểm kê lại những công trình kiến trúc Pháp cũng như đặt ra tiêu chí về kiến trúc, cảnh quan… để các nhà kiến trúc, xây dựng có thể thực hiện tốt yêu cầu quan trọng đó

Báo ảnh Việt Nam

Khu nghỉ dưỡng Đồng Mô

Alternately called the New Puritanism or Radical Traditionalism, the movement is a recession-fueled reaction to the post-Bilbao era of high-tech, high-price, hypertrophied design. “Values are changing,” wrote London Times critic Tom Dyckhoff in late 2009, in response to Caruso St John Architect’s austere Nottingham Contemporary museum. “Two years ago you could propose a revolving skyscraper bedecked in golden columns and purple unicorns and be taken halfway seriously. Now, like long-haul flying, architectural excess is sniffed at with a disdain approaching distaste.”

Perhaps. But is the New Modesty really all that modest? No, because it assumes that the ideas swirling within the architectural profession define the world beyond it, that just because a bunch of designers and critics have grown tired of iconic structures, real estate developers and the public will follow suit, dooming our cities to a decade of SANAA’s unadorned boxes.

After all, who does Dyckhoff think is doing the sniffing? Certainly not the many who swooned, during a recession fueled by overleveraged debt, at the opening of Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the very embodiment of excess. A reporter for The Christian Science Monitor, echoing thousands of blog posts and comments, called it “an exuberant architectural triumph.” The public loves a blockbuster, whether it’s a movie or a skyscraper.

Indeed, movies make a useful comparison. For all the praise that critics heap on edgy directors and low-budget indies, movies are an industry, guided not by theory but by popular taste. The same goes for buildings. The Burj, Beijing’s CCTV tower—these megaprojects weren’t built because critics said big was beautiful; they were the result of new economic power in the Persian Gulf and China, places whose leaders and titans saw iconic architecture as the best way to announce themselves.

During the 1990s, critic Herbert Muschamp waged war against Donald Trump, lambasting the developer’s penchant for the gaudy and the pompous when he could have been engaging thoughtful designers. But while Trump may not have liked being attacked in The New York Times, he didn’t stop building big, brash towers, and people didn’t stop buying space in them. In fact, the whole exercise proved just how little the critic’s voice mattered. Nor did the barbs aimed by Muschamp’s successor, Nicolai Ouroussoff, at mogul Bruce Ratner’s Barclays Center, in Brooklyn, N.Y., delay its construction or alter its design. What did? A collapsing market, which forced Ratner to bag a Frank Gehry scheme for a more moderate one by Ellerbe Becket and SHoP Architects.

Over the coming decade, what determines the size and rough shape of architectural output won’t be hair-shirted critics and designers, but the course of the global economy. If nothing big is commissioned in Dubai next year, it won’t be because the local elite have found religion. It will be because they can’t get the funding.

The public and the real-estate sector aren’t the same thing, of course, and it’s possible that some day people will turn against blockbuster architecture. But that’s unlikely, if only because public attitudes toward design skew heavily to the pragmatic. Barclays Center will be a public success as long as fans can easily get in and out of its arena. Aside from grumbling neighbors, most people won’t give much thought to its massing, lines, and style.

Sure, there will be buildings that seem to speak to a new sense of modesty, and the design press will laud them as such. But don’t expect the public to follow suit. Daniel Burnham may have been referring to urban planning, but his words still apply: “Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized.” Nor will the New Modesty.

Tokyo Reflections is a temporary interactive installation in Tokyo Station and other stations across the network. Based on the fictional idea that the subway system was previously used as a series of tunnels which ‘were inhabited by almost forgotten alien species’, the installation encourages travellers to interact with one another while they wait for a train. Separated into two groups, the ‘observers’ and the ‘inter-actors’, the ‘alien species’ invite members of the public to also take on these personas, either participating as inter-actors in small groups or simply observing the display from afar.

The experiment aims to transform Tokyo Station’s underground platforms into dynamic public spaces, rather than an unsociable thoroughfare, by exploring tangible interactive opportunities. It is therefore entitled Tokyo Reflections as it ‘dreams of small changes to fill the emptiness of thoughts with reflections’. This architectural installation has been commissioned in an attempt to provide a catalyst for a social intervention, binding individual travellers through voluntary mental and physical interaction.

As part of the installation, Tokyo Station will undergo various simple measures to enhance the atmosphere of the platform area. Light arrangements will be concentrated on the rail track area, replacing the existing dull light boxes and the back wall will be covered with backlit membrane, reflecting diffused light back onto the platform area.