Ernest Hebrard took up his duties in Ha Noi in 1923 at the Central Services of Urban Planning and Architecture and initiated a renewal and expansion of colonial architecture. While serving as city planner, he envisaged a new governmental administrative area beyond the Governor General's Palace to the south of West Lake. He also planned to reunite the already existing administrative services and build new ones to extend the city westward to To Lich River and eastward to the Red River. However, his vision required too much capital at a time when the French economy was weak. Nevertheless, his plans remained the official reference until the 1940s and provided inspiration and guidelines for later projects by Louis-George Pineau.
As an architect, Hebrard dedicated himself to three main projects: The Indochina University (now Ha Noi University at 19 Le Thanh Tong, completed in 1926), the Bureau des Finances (now the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at the end of Dien Bien Phu) Street, completed in 1931) and the Musee de The History Museum.
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| The History Museum |
l'Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient (now the History Museum, 1 Pham Ngu Lao, built between 1925 and 1932). He used his knowledge of Chinese, Vietnamese, and Khmer architecture in an attempt to convey the essence of local cultures through architecture and simultaneously to demonstrate technical mastery of a specific environment. He sketched the framework of the contextual architecture that came to be called "the Indochinese Architectural Style."