The former French Quarter of Hanoi is a historic district (1880-1940) which contains the most important Indochinese heritage complex in South-East Asia. While this 200-hectare area, located in the heart of the Vietnamese capital, is subject to the pressures of a brutal and disorderly urban development, a local awareness is worried about the disappearance of colonial villas.

This study consists in guiding the approach of Vietnamese urban planners by proposing an analysis methodology, an urban project and then a regulatory tool that will enable this strategic district to become denser and thus meet the new challenges of a growing Asian capital, without erasing its historical aspect.
The project takes note of and builds on the specific features of the district as “heritages” to be revealed: a checkerboard layout composed of wide avenues, an exceptional abundance of trees lined up, an architectural heritage with a varied range of colonial buildings: monuments, civil, cultural or religious buildings, shops, residences.

It enhances its historical legibility and its position as an interface with the other key districts of the capital: the traditional district of 36 streets, Hoan Kiem Lake, the railway station sector, the southern extensions, the dike road and the Red River. It consists of imagining a densification around the villas and monuments to be preserved, but also of developing green axes, based on the exceptional existing plant heritage, to attenuate the effects of a development that tends to suffocate the capital.