After our lovely visit to VinUniversity and the Pavilion residential project in the morning, we continued our day at the VinHomes Ocean Park 2 development. Ocean Park 2 is located southwest of the city center, and was about a 40 minute bus ride from our hotel. This development has houses and apartment buildings in many different architectural styles, with different areas influenced by French, Korean, and Venetian architecture. There are also medical facilities, leisure areas, and a school within Ocean Park.

Our first construction site visit in this area was to VinSchool. This school will be built for the young residents of Ocean Park to complete their K-12 education. The construction is expected to be complete in May 2024 so that the furnishings can be added in time for the new school year in August 2024.  The school features 4 floors and landscaping on many areas of the roof. There are 147 classrooms planned with each expected to hold 20-25 students. We were able to see the conceptual design plans for the school, to visualize and compare the construction progress to the rendering. 

Construction methods in Vietnam are very different to what we usually see in the United States. The site had a very large tower crane (200 ton) for a building with only four floors. The structure was concrete with masonry infill, but in America we build a lot more with steel. However, it makes sense to choose concrete over steel when building in a humid climate like Vietnam. 

On construction sites in the US, it is very rare to see more than a couple of women performing work on site. However, that is not the case in Vietnam. There were many women working on site, moving and gather materials, and performing masonry work. Overall, visiting this school was a great learning experience and provided great perspective about construction methods here. 

There was still more of Ocean Park to be explored after visiting VinSchool. We boarded the bus again and drove past K-Town, which features homes inspired by Korean architecture. 

We continued driving to the most colorful area of Ocean Park, named Mega Grand World. This is an area of homes and businesses inspired by Venetian architecture, and even included a man made canal and gondolas to ride. We were able to get off of the bus for a short time in order to see this amazing area. The area attracts locals to visit by providing a free bus service to and from the center of the city. At the center of the canal there was even a pirate ship! We encountered the pirate actors on our way to the bus and snapped a quick picture with them. We had the opportunity to take some very fun pictures and learn more about what Ocean Park has to offer. It was another great day in Vietnam and we can’t wait to keep exploring in the days to come. 

Blog written by Joie Gindorf