Vientiane Architecture

Vientiane streetscape

My untrained eye has identified six architectural styles in Vientiane: Original French colonial; Updated French colonial; Run down post 1975; Updated post 1975; New; and Traditional (including temples). 

Original French colonial

Generally these buildings look like they would once have been lovely...with breezes blowing through the shutters, tiled floors and high ceilings to keep everything cool.  They’re now a reminder of a colonial period and generally show signs of advanced concrete rot.

Updated French Colonial

Sometimes these are original buildings which have been rescued and repaired; more often they look like they’re modern buildings in the style of older ones.  They often look cool and comfortable but just don’t seem to have the same elegance as the originals.  They tend to be owned/rented by international banks or the embassies of countries with dubious human rights records (not Australia, ones like Brunei and Saudi Arabia which have more money).

Run down post 1975

Following the instalment of the communist government in 1975 the country was closed to the west and largely supported by the former Soviet Union and other eastern bloc countries.  China and, to a lesser extent, Vietnam have also had an influence in and supported the Lao government – more so after the fall of the Soviet Union.  (From about 1990 Lao PDR opened up again – slowly at first, much more rapidly in recent years).  As a consequence there are a lot of slowly rotting concrete brutalist buildings.  Mostly these just look horrible: they must be pretty awful to live in.

Updated (not restored) post 1975

These seem to be Queen Anne bottom and Mary Anne above – usually the ground floor of an older concrete building (usually not in great shape) has been renovated and turned into a cafe or something for the tourist market.  These sorts of places look to me like they’ll be good for a year or two before the smell of damp or mould pervades and they need (at least) a completely new fit out.

New

Many new buildings (and a lot of well maintained older ones, to be fair) look very pleasant to live in.  Usually these are two or three story buildings, often two residential stories above a shop front at street level.  

There are also new shops and new hotels which (so far!) seem well built and maintained.

Traditional & temples

Wooden traditional buildings on stilts are very rare in Vientiane – we did visit some as part of a museum but largely I think they’ve been replaced by concrete and brick.  There are simpler rendered brick buildings which also seem fairly traditional to me – I see a lot more of these in Savannakhet too.

 There are many, many sim (temple complexes) in Vientiane – not only the few which tourists visit but lots which are in daily use by monks and local residents.  These have features in common (white walls surrounding a number of yellow-painted buildings including a number of ornately decorated wats and thats, as well as simpler dormitories and other domestic buildings) but are all very different from each other in specifics such as lay out, size, number of wats, wall decorations, etc.

Decorations

I’ve found lots of quirky decorations popping up throughout Vientiane, often on my morning walks.  Looking out for them is a fun way to explore different parts of the city!