Drawing Saigon: How One Artist Is Preserving the Downtown Skyline

Tawny brown, a few inches thick and secured with a cord, the leather binder lands on the bar with a thud. Midday sun beams into the pop-up whisky library atop Centec Tower, a room that could pass for the set of a James Bond film, and a smartly dressed Richie Fawcett unpacks his collection of drawings.

Out they come, one after another after another, a parade of busy downtown roundabouts and low-flung shophouses, colonial villas and blocky art deco buildings. Faithfully recorded on thick, parchment-colored paper, Fawcett's artistic bookkeeping documents countless street corners and roadside scenes of downtown Saigon.

“That view from the art museum looking towards Ben Thanh, that's going to go forever once the Ritz Carlton's built,” the British artist tells Saigoneer. He's retrieved a version of his first-ever Saigon sketch – there have been several over the years – depicting the chaos of Quach Thi Trang Roundabout as it extends past the Ben Thanh bus station all the way to the city's Fine Arts Museum.

“Really, in a way, that was my first impetus to start drawing,” Fawcett continues. As new buildings go up and old ones come down, the 42-year-old artist has spent the last four and a half years transcribing Saigon's ephemeral street corners for posterity.

“It's all about timing,” he says. “I've captured a corner and then a few months later it's gone. Do you know what I mean? That's made me go out and draw more.”

A bar designer and cocktail mixologist by profession, Fawcett arrived in Vietnam with a unique set of experiences.

A student of Egyptian archaeology, the artist spent time at museums drawing artifacts in his university days before working as a freelance photographer in London in the 1990s.

By the time Fawcett arrived in Vietnam, however, his artistic pursuits had faded to the background.

“Since probably my mid-20s until now, I hadn't really touched paper and pen,” says Fawcett. “It was only here that I really got into it because obviously Saigon [is] so full of energy and contrast of life, and you just see everything played out on the street.”

Now, years on, Fawcett keeps a substantial collection of ink-and-paper artwork, and his talent has transformed into more than a hobby, with a couple of exhibitions in 2012 and 2013. Though he still works full-time as general manager of Shri, Centec Tower's penthouse restaurant and bar, the artist spends much of his free time on downtown street corners, capturing the ever-changing scenery of Saigon.

“I've always loved street life so I needed a new challenge, something to capture other than a picture because I thought pictures and photographs really don't capture the essence of what's going on unless you've got good technique,” explains Fawcett.

“I wanted to connect because when you take a picture in the street then you're there for an instant and you're like a ghost; you've gone,” he continues. “So, for me, I wanted to actually experience more of the culture in terms of the street life and the real people. For that, I needed to stay in the same place for a long [time] and to do that you need to draw.”

At weekends or on days off, Fawcett sets aside a couple hours and fades into the scenery on a given street corner, outlining every door frame and shop sign. Though he's got less time on his hands these days, Fawcett continues to add to his street sketch collection when time allows but has also taken on a larger endeavor: panoramas.

From his binder, Fawcett pulls out a large paper busied with darkened windows and crosshatched trees. Then another. Then another. We lay the three of them side-by-side along the bar. This is his latest pet project: an intricate, dizzingly detailed, 360-degree aerial view of the city, hand-drawn one panel at a time.

“I've kind of arrived at this style,” he says, running his hands over the tiny, jet black etchings on the page. Every inch is rife with detail. “After not drawing for six months, there's a lot of energy that needs to get down.”

Taken from the vantage point of District 1's Centec Tower on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, Fawcett's current project overlooks the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Central Post Office as well as their tree-lined surrounding streets. In order to display the area's historical buildings, Diamond Plaza has been removed in Fawcett's rendering and replaced with a car park. He's also been commissioned to do one or two other high-rise views of the city, capturing large swathes of downtown Saigon all in one heavily detailed go.

As Saigon's rapid-fire development continues to transform the city skyline, Fawcett is caught in the unusual position of both benefiting from the sky-high towers of downtown District 1, which afford him the aerial views from which he draws inspiration, and also racing to capture old Saigon before it disappears altogether.

“These kind of places taking over from the architecture that's been around for years is the reality of life in Saigon right now,” he says, “so hence my urgency to draw as much as possible in a short space of time.”

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