The contest was part of collaboration between artists in East Asia and the UK in a three-year regional project called “Transforming Public Places”.

Starting in 2008, the project is taking place simultaneously in China, the Republic of Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, Thailand and Vietnam and will end in 2010.

The prize-winning project proposed using beams of light to mimic the shape of the original 18 spans of Hanoi’s Long Bien Bridge before it was damaged during the war. These already destroyed spans were originally designed as a swaying dragon over the Red River.

After the war, other parts of the bridge were repaired, but the structure is used only for motorbikes, bicycles and trains.

Artist Tran Luong, one of the contest’s judges, said the prize-winning idea was simple but had deeply impressed him.
Luong said that the students had revisited a bitter period of Vietnam’s history, which was a meaningful thing for countries that had undergone war to undertake.

The contest called “Awakened Spaces” was a joint initiative between the British Council and the Sports&Culture newspaper. In the space of 3 months, around 500 proposals were submitted to “awaken more than 200 public space” in Hanoi, HCM City, Da Nang, Da Lat, Nha Trang, Hue and Pleiku.