Adaptation & Resistance: Vietnamese Context-Specific Responses to Climate Change

The article begins with a critical stance towards the contemporary development of responses towards climate change. It makes the hypothesis that a near-generic toolkit is rendering landscapes worldwide as more and more generic. It suggests a reversal of logics and develops design scenarios with geographic as well as socio-cultural specificity from which principles can be distilled and reiterated in similar contexts. It denies a universality of space and the growing reliance on performance criteria, but instead underscores the power of cultural appropriations and geographic specificities. In order to illustrate the hypothesis, the paper turns its focus to a series of recent projects in Vietnam, designed by the authors and others in collaboration with Vietnamese partners. Ultimately, six principles are developed in response to climate change. All the principles are anchored in a careful reading of the site-specific and innate logics of landscapes—inextricably tied to their ecological foundation and social and cultural formation. The proposed strategies work to bridge the divide between the dichotomies of economy and ecology, culture and nature and urbanism and landscape, while adapting to new challenges brought by climate change and resisting generic responses.