Ernest Hebrard, a French architect, designed Ha Noi's History Museum, which is known to older generations as the Louis Finot Museum and was once run by the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-Orient (EFEO). EFEO provided Hebrard the means to research different elements of Asian architecture and to rework and integrate them into a blend of tradition and modernity. His personal inspiration and style strongly influenced the project, while his preference for Art Deco rather than neoclassicism helped him move away from excessively formal Asian pastiche.
Hebrard was the first person to try to free architecture in Wet Nam from both the French formal neoclassicism of the early 1900s and the simple imitation of local monuments. He was also the first person to emphasise the transposition of spaces or surroundings rather than architectural details. He searched for the principles of composition underlying Viet Nam's scholarly architecture as represented by the different pagodas and đình (communal houses) in the north of the country. The museum displays a dual architectural character through a system of posts supporting a heavy, over-flowing roof with both its exterior and underneath profusely decorated.
The roof is the main focus of attention because it extends a levitating shadow to protect the structure below. The impression of immaterial fineness is created by the shadow thanks to the transposition of spatial effects and techniques in the building. By relying on double posts, beams, and lintels, Hebrard was able to use the bricks and plaster common in the colony. He blended fine details of Art Nouveau with Vietnamese traditional architecture in skillfully chiselled corbels, wide beams, and indented spaces decorated with motifs and panels arranged like traditional Vietnamese parallel sentences. Hebrard's strong artistic conviction in building the Museum initiated a style of scholarly architecture that was both national and international and came to be called "Critical Regionalism."