Hanoi Museum in Vietnam

October 27, 2010 Category: Cultural, Public Buildings

Hanoi Museum, was designed by gmp von Gerkan, Marg und Partner, that located in Vietnam the new museum of Hanoi’s history, was inaugurated on Wednesday this week as part of the millennial celebrations at the Vietnamese capital. The ceremony took place in the presence of national and regional government representatives. Also invited and present were Meinhard von Gerkan and Nikolaus Goetze of gmp, together with Martin Göricke of INROS LACKNER AG. Architects von Gerkan, Marg and Partners won the international competition for Hanoi Museum in 2005.

The 30,000 sq m museum can be entered from the park from all four cardinal points. Within the square building, a central circular atrium links an entrance level with the three exhibition levels. These are arranged as terraces projecting further outwards on each higher floor, forming an inverted pyramid. For visitors, the effect is that, looking out, they seem to be floating over the landscape.

As the building was conceived as an inverted pyramid, the topmost floor is also the largest, at 92.4 sq m. Floor areas decrease downwards, with the square on the ground floor measuring 42 sq m. The building was stiffened against wind and earthquake stresses by four symmetrically arranged cores with a dimension between axes of 8.4 x 8.4m. The cores are located in the corners of the ground floor, and that is where the stairwells and lifts are positioned for vertical access.

The floors are suspended from the roof structure via tension members in the structural grid, which is why the latter (109.2m x 109.2m and 5m high) had to be produced immediately after the cores. The roof structure was made of wall panels made of reinforced concrete and trussed girders. The wall panels link the four cores and enhance the overall stiffness of the building. The edges and inner areas of the roof structure were carried out as steel frames to reduce dead weight.

Hanoi Museum design by gmp von Gerkan, Marg und Partner