Colonial shop houses at HCM City's historic Cho Lon area. (Source: kienviet.vn)HCM City (VNS/VNA) – Ho Chi Minh City hasgreat potential for restoring thousands of villas, houses and buildings, manyof them over 100 years old, according to the Architectural Research Centre at themunicipal Department of Planning and Architecture.
HCM City has about 3,000 valuable old houses andvillas that could be preserved but are likely to be demolished, the centresaid.
Of the number, nearly 1,300 houses were builtbefore 1975. About 168 of them are under State management and receive fundsfrom the city for repair and preservation.
The city's Development and Research Institutehas classified villas and houses into three types. Type 1 are buildings withsignificant historical or architectural value that must be preserved, whiletype 3 includes buildings with less historical or architectural value, but canand should be restored. About 90 per cent of the buildings belong to type 3.
Architect Tran Van Khai said that these oldbuildings have economic and tourism value in a major city like HCM City, andthat local human resources play an important role in preserving and restoringold houses in the city.
However, most of the restoration efforts inrecent years have been done by foreign groups.
A representative of Minerva Joint-Stock Company,the owner of a 100-year-old villa on 110-112 Vo Van Tan street in district 3,said the company spent 35 million USD to buy the building in 2016. Earlier thisyear, the municipal People's Committee gave approval to the company to hire aforeign team to restore the villa over a two-year period
However, the representative noted that localresidents and companies as well as the government cannot always depend onforeign teams to do the work. "So, we signed a Memorandum of Understandingwith Van Lang University to offer training courses in restoration andmaintenance of old structures," the representative said.-VNS/VNA
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