Among Hanoi’s labyrinthine Old Quarter tucked behind modern shopfronts lie hidden narrow alleyways leading to the city’s ancient collective housing units. These unique residential blocks have endured for centuries despite turmoil and urbanization, providing a living timeline back to traditional Vietnamese lifestyles. While often invisible to casual visitors, these communal homes characterize the essence of Old Quarter living.
Characteristics of Traditional Collective Housing
Layout and Shared Spaces
In contrast to Western apartments segregated into distinct units, Hanoi’s collective housing consists of several families occupying different floors within a tube house building. Units run perpendicular to bustling streets, extending through long rectangular blocks. The designs incorporate shared internal alleyways and open courtyards among residents.
Typically on the ground level sits a shop, cafe, or business near the street entryway while rear wings house living quarters. The upper levels often have balcony space facing the street rather than direct access. Kitchens, washing areas, ancestor shrines, and pantries concentrate around shared rear courtyards that lack privacy but facilitate community relations.
Architectural Features
Traditional collective housing emphasizes versatile wooden architectural elements alongside yellow and green embellishments. Stylistic components often integrate Chinese and Vietnamese cultural motifs like carved wooden screens, red lacquered panels, and embroidered dragon beams mixed with French colonial shuttered windows.
The structures utilize brick, concrete and wood for durable, fire-resistant housing able to withstand Hanoi’s wet climate, typhoons and dense construction. The buildings commonly reach three to five floors with additional mezzanines and storage lofts within attics and upper levels to maximize space. Ladders, steep staircases, and narrow hallways navigate these vertical labyrinths.
History of Collective Housing
Hanoi’s Old Quarter originated over a millennium ago as clusters of specialized merchant and craft guilds settled around Hoan Kiem Lake. Blacksmiths, rooftile makers, medicines, and silk producers dominated different streets named accordingly. Merchants constructed spacious homes while poorer craftsmen resided in collective housing interspersed behind or above family-run storefronts.
Destroyed and rebuilt repeatedly the narrow shophouses retained their essential tube shapes and internal courtyards through periods of Chinese and French colonial influences. Rapid 20th century modernization demolished many antique structures, threatening traditional housing in Hanoi’s core. However, preservation efforts in recent decades now try safeguarding these collective homes and associated lifestyles.
Insights into Local Living
For visitors, temporarily embedding within Old Quarter collective housing grants meaningful cultural connections. Tight-knitted communities share intimate daily routines beyond what hotels can provide. Watching neighborhood children play popular games in courtyards while grandparents prepare family meals offers authentic intergenerational bonds.
As residents pass by each other’s business and living spaces on stairwells, alleyways and landings, they exchange casual greetings, quick visits and small gifts of snacks or other niceties. During Tet festivities, everyone dons new clothes, elderly receive lucky money from youngsters while lion dancers move from house to house dispelling evil spirits through the neighborhood.
If you are in Vietnam and interested in discovering more about Hanoi – the capital and its significance, we invite you to join us at Free Walking Tours Hanoi. We’ll take you across the building, and provide you with a unique perspective of the city. Book now and don’t miss out on this amazing experience.
