The building for State Bank of Vietnam headquarters was formerly the French Indochina Bank headquarters in Hanoi, originally designed by Félix Dumail in 1928 in neoclassical style. However, it was not until the early 1930s that the architectural style was redesigned by architect Georges Trouvé in art deco style.
The structure of the building is three-storied: The ground floor with very thick wall, small opened-windows for placement of money, precious metals and service rooms. The first floor is the space for transaction with void in the centre covered by reinforced concrete arches on the roof. The second floor consists of three working offices placed on three sides around the central block. The above structure shows that the building was designed according to the decisive model of the French banks of that time.
The main pavilion is a semi-cylindrical structure decorated with patterns for both ventilation and taking natural light, stacked with circular cylinders of descending radius, essentially to cover a dome with glass wholes that organized in a circle of very interesting shape. The whole glass windows system is arranged backwards from the external wall to avoid flamboyant tropical sunlight. Outside the glass doors on the first floor there is a system of timber roller shutters, while the second floor uses double- winged doors.
With clear-shaped anterior surface and light-filled interior, in addition to its prime location, Indochina Bank’s headquarter was considered the most perfect art deco building in Hanoi.
Photo
Trieu Chien
Location
49 Ly Thai To Street, Hoan Kiem District
Hanoi, Vietnam
