Hommel Beer Factory
BIA HOI CULTURE'S ORIGIN: FROM A COLONICAL DRINKING TO A CULTURE OF URBAN DWELLERS
Introduction
Before the French colonization, Vietnam had a long history of rice alcohol production. The beer industry was created in 1892 by Alfred Hommel, founder of Hommel Brewery (Brasserie Hommel) in Hanoi. Along with the Larue Brewery (Brasserie Larue) in Saigon, the Hommel Brewery was one of the two biggest breweries in Indochina.
Beer was the drink that seemed most suitable in the Indochina climate. At first, beer was mainly consumed by the French, then it became more and more popular with local Vietnamese people.
Besides water, the ingredients used by the Hommel Brewery were malted barley and hops imported from Europe and a proportion of rice (preferably denitrogenated). The difficulty was not in the purchase of ingredients of first quality, but in purifying water used, acquiring expensive brewing equipment, and adapting it to the hot and humid climate of Hanoi. Another challenge for the production of bottled beer was transportation. The brewery came up with the idea of producing a draft beer called bia hoi sold in kegs instead of bottles. Over time, bia hoi became a staple of Vietnamese culture and it remains so to this day.
Name: Brasserie Hommel / Société de la Brasserie Hommel / Société des Brasseries et Glacières de l'Indochine / Hanoi Brewery / Hanoi Brewery Company / Hanoi Beer-Alcohol-Beverage Corporation (Habeco)
Location: 183 Hoang Hoa Tham, Ha Noi
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Chronological timeline
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Agents
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Investigations
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Architectural and Urban preliminary assessment
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Perspective / Thematic / Narrative point of view
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Bibliography
Provoke
Unlike a conventional design project or an academic research. The project aims to bridge these two extremities by dynamic, experimental designs and creative theoretical interpretations. Its goal is not to give final answers but suggestions, provocations, and potential interventions, which could be interpreted under the form of urban folies , utopian or dystopian scenarios. As the results of a practice-led research program, the project’s outcome will take form under a series of annual publications that explores the evolving potential of urban banalities. It could serve as references for research-led architectural and urban practices.
Hanoi Ad Hoc is a multiannual, interdisciplinary research framework and design programme. Initiated by Arch.Mai Hung Trung co-leading with Professor/Arch. Danielle Labbé and joined by four partners: Professor/Anthropologist Christina Schwenkel, Arch.Duc Le, Professor/Geographer Sylvie Fanchette, Prof. Nguyen Manh Tri. The project’s title refers to its main purpose that focuses on the insight of tailored urban makings,and dealing specifically with contemporary urban issues of Hanoi. This design-oriented research hereby will provocatively reconfigure the contemporary vision about forgotten parts of Vietnamese modernism architecture,and shed light on everyday urban banalities.
The urbanscape of Hanoi is a mosaic pattern made of improvised pieces. Our “Ad hoc” research accentuates on the current way of making, unmaking and remaking the city of Hanoi using “whatever is at hand” in order to conform with political, social and urban transformation? The Adhocism is visible from the urban to the architectural scale through adaptations of urban fabric within a given condition and spatial appropriations on the sidewalk.The project attempts hereby to examine its richness, and how these improvised urban solutions crystallized permanently the cityscape over time. Our three main acts or research are to archive, to theorize and to provoke.
Archive
One of the needed conditions to establish Hanoi Ad hoc’s formwork is to collect the blueprint database of buildings of interest in order to reconstruct a digital platform. We attempt to explore forgotten modernism heritages and their mechanisms, “photographic survey”, and all archival documents related to the selected building (articles that talk abt it, old pictures of the building, sounds...)
Theorize
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Hanoi Ad hoc is dedicated to open-ended acts of theorizing, reevaluating urban ordinaries instead of finite descriptive works. This guideline will be the critical and fundamental core values of the project.
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Hanoi Ad hoc seeks to comprehend Vietnamese Modernism and Modernity, its link with international historical events, the movement’s rise, fall, and its impacts on the contemporary Vietnamese urban scene.
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Understand the reciprocal relationship between different urban entities. (from social housing, factories to cultural palaces)