A Public Monument, a City Gateway, and a Living Park for Hanoi's Millennium

Project: Chim Lac Viet - Peace Bird Gate, Công Viên Hòa Bình (Peace Park) Location: Tây Hồ Tây district, Hanoi, Vietnam Programme: Monumental gateway + public park design Status: Built - inaugurated October 8, 2010 Occasion: 1,000th anniversary of Thang Long–Hanoi Architect: Chi Tam Nguyen

A City Turns One Thousand

In 2010, Hanoi celebrated one thousand years since its founding as Thang Long - the City of the Soaring Dragon. For a city of this historical weight, the millennium was not merely an occasion for ceremony. It was a moment to ask: what does Hanoi want to say about itself, to itself, and to the world?
The answer, for the northwestern gateway of the city, came in the form of a bird in flight.

The Chim Lac Viet: A Symbol Reborn

The Chim Lac - the legendary crane of Vietnamese tradition - is one of the oldest and most omnipresent symbols of Vietnamese identity. Engraved on the surface of ancient bronze Dong Son drums, woven into dynastic crests, present in the iconography of Hanoi's oldest relics: this bird has accompanied Vietnamese civilisation for over two millennia. It represents grace, longevity, and the enduring spirit of a people.

The design challenge was precise and demanding: how do you translate a symbol this ancient and this loaded into a contemporary architectural gesture - without betraying it, without reducing it to pastiche, and without making it disappear into abstraction?

The answer was origami.

A Giant Origami in White Steel

The Peace Bird Gate is conceived as a monumental origami unfolding above a reflecting pool - a single, dynamic white steel structure whose angular planes simultaneously evoke the folded geometry of paper art and the opened wings of a crane in mid-flight. The form is neither purely figurative nor purely abstract: it hovers in the precise space between recognition and surprise, where the viewer reads "bird" and then reads "monument" and then reads "gate" - all at once.

From ground level, the structure reads as an act of controlled tension: a soaring wing held taut by cable stays, a body planted firmly in the earth, a neck and beak reaching toward the sky. The white finish against Hanoi's hazy light gives it an almost ethereal quality - the bird appears to hover rather than stand.

From the air, the composition reveals its second layer of meaning. The three cable-stay arms of the monument, viewed from above within the circular reflecting pool, form a clear and unmistakable Y inscribed in a circle: the universal peace icon. A symbol within a symbol - the Chim Lac of Vietnam, holding the peace sign of the world. The UNESCO designation of Hanoi as a City of Peace finds its spatial expression here.

A Gate, A Park, A Breathing Space

The Peace Bird does not stand alone. It anchors one end of Công Viên Hòa Bình — Peace Park - a green lung conceived as a genuine public landscape for the dense northwestern districts of Hanoi. Three interconnected lakes form the organisational spine of the park, their irregular organic shapes creating a continuous water mirror that reflects the monument and the sky. Shaded pathways, planted islands, open lawns, and resting areas extend outward from the central monument into a landscape designed for everyday use.

The park was positioned deliberately. Situated along the main axis connecting Noi Bai International Airport to the West Lake urban district - the ambitious Tây Hồ Tây development - it marks the threshold of a new Hanoi: the first significant landmark travellers encounter on arrival, the first indication of what the city aspires to become.

As an urban gesture, this positioning is significant. The gate does not face inward toward the historic centre. It faces outward, toward the world - welcoming, open, and contemporary in its formal language while deeply Vietnamese in its cultural roots.

The Space Belongs to Its People

Every time I return to this park, the same thing strikes me: the people have taken it over completely - and that is exactly what it was designed for.

Children run around the base of the monument. Families spread out on the grass beside the lakes. Elderly residents do their morning exercises along the shaded pathways. Couples photograph themselves against the reflection of the white bird in the water. Vendors set up along the perimeter. The park breathes with the rhythm of the city around it.

This is the measure I care about most: not the formal recognition, not the photographs in magazines, but whether the space works - whether it actually improves daily life for the people who live near it. A monument that people avoid is a failure, however beautiful. A monument that people inhabit, that becomes a reference point in their mental map of the city, that parents bring their children to on weekends - that is architecture doing its proper work.

The Peace Bird has become, in the fifteen years since its inauguration, one of the recognisable landmarks of northwestern Hanoi. It appears in travel photographs, in school textbooks, in the background of wedding portraits. It was covered by Architizer's own journal shortly after its completion as one of the notable public monuments of Southeast Asia. It is, simply, part of Hanoi now.

Design Intent: Three Principles

Tradition without pastiche. The Chim Lac is one of the most culturally charged symbols in Vietnam. The risk of literalism - of simply sculpting a crane - was real. The origami approach allowed the design to honour the form through abstraction: you feel the bird before you see it, which is a far more powerful architectural experience than recognition alone.

Symbol at every scale. The peace icon visible from the air was not a later addition — it was embedded in the structural logic of the monument from the first sketch. The cable-stay arms were dimensioned and angled precisely to form the Y within the circle when seen from above. Architecture that rewards different vantage points - ground, elevated, aerial - creates a richer relationship with its city over time.

Monument as invitation. A gate is only meaningful if it welcomes. The park design deliberately avoided fences, barriers, or programmatic restrictions that would limit public access. The reflecting pool, the open lawns, the continuous pathways - all were designed to make the space feel owned by its users, not by its institution. Public space that feels public is rarer than it should be.

A Note on Time

The Peace Bird was completed in 2010 - fifteen years ago. In architecture, fifteen years is long enough to know whether something has lasted or merely survived.

This one has lasted. The structure remains in excellent condition. The park has matured - the trees are taller, the lakes more settled, the pathways worn smooth by millions of footsteps. The monument has acquired the quiet authority that only time can give: it looks as though it has always been there, which is perhaps the highest compliment a new building can receive in a city one thousand years old.

For me, it remains a reminder of why public space matters - not as decoration for the city, but as its living connective tissue. An oasis of peace in the heart of a loud, fast, and endlessly vital metropolis. Water, trees, and a white bird in flight: the simplest things, doing the most essential work.

Chi Tam Nguyen is a French architect DPLG and founder of TAMA Architecture Paris. He previously founded TAMA Architects in Hanoi (2015–2023), where this project was conceived and built. → tama-architecture-paris.fr