FORTIFICATIONS IN VIETNAM: THEIR HISTORY, DEVELOPMENT, AND HERITAGE VALUE

Abstract

Throughout the history of human civilization, any nation's existence has had to go through the marks of wars and conflicts. The fortification is an architectural element representing the military construction genre throughout that process. Depending on the characteristics of geographical location, urban planning, military science, and war doctrine, the shape of the fortification differs significantly between Western civilizations such as Roman, France or China, and India. With the unique geographical position located at the converging edge of the Asian continent as well as the starting point of the Western colonization progress, Vietnam has almost all the essential features and morphology of different types of military landscape architecture in the world; such as the complex fortified towers in the Indian style, square-shaped citadel of the Chinese style, fortification based on natural formations and especially the Vauban star-shaped citadel. The forms of overlapping fortifications contain exceptional cultural landscape heritage values. Through the bibliographic method, observation method, and meta-analytical method, the thesis aims to form a data system on the existing military landscape in Vietnam from the founding of the country to the present, including citadels that have been completely destroyed. There by clarifying heritage values ​​and its contributions in shaping urban cultural identity. (Chapters I, II, III).

In parallel with establishing a data system on fortifications in Vietnam, the thesis also aims to propose a new perspective on restoration thinking in conservation. In the context of the development of scientific achievements, the establishment technology of multi-dimensional virtual reality models allows the simulation and restoration of ancient monuments in digital form. This restoration does not cause physical damage to the existing layer of monuments, so it is possible to simulate many different layers with different ages of the same monument and transform them through the artificial device. On the other hand, it can be seen that this form of restoration opens up more flexible ways of applying the Venice Charter, which requires accurate data when restoring monuments. Instead, hypotheses can also be reasonably applied when doing conservation. By proposing a feasible model for multi-layered digital preservation of military landscape with a prototyping method, the thesis points out the urgency of forming a new theoretical basis for restoration to implement to the existing heritage conservation documents. (chapters IV, V).

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