Visualized tradition and living heritage : Hanoi s architectural characteristics in paintings

This paper examines the visualized sense of identity in Hanoi, the capital city of Vietnam, via an analysis of paintings of streets and buildings by local painters whose artistic expressions reflect Hanoi s architectural and urban tradition and present-day changes. Local experiences in (re)identifying, promoting and maintaining the city s tangible and intangible heritage will be discussed with some consideration of conservation practices and recent community art practices that focus on visualization of urban heritage. These findings will hopefully lead to some implication for current and future practices of conserving urban heritage in the face of rapid change of the built environment in Hanoi or elsewhere.