News · Design & Architecture · July 26, 2018

Landmark 81 Opens in Ho Chi Minh City as Vietnam’s Tallest Building

The 461-metre tower on the Saigon River was completed in 2018, with a shopping centre at its base, a hotel in its upper floors and, from April 2019, an observation deck on levels 79 to 81.

Landmark 81 was completed in Ho Chi Minh City in 2018. At 461 metres and 81 storeys it is the tallest building in Vietnam and the second tallest in Southeast Asia, after Merdeka 118 in Kuala Lumpur.

The tower

The developer was Vinhomes, the property arm of Vingroup, the largest private company in the country. The design was by the British firm Atkins. The tower is composed of a cluster of square tubes of different heights, which rise together and end at different levels, the tallest carrying the spire. The architects compared the form to a bundle of bamboo stalks, which in Vietnamese tradition stands for strength in unity. The floor area is 241,000 square metres.

The building stands on the west bank of the Saigon River in the Binh Thanh district, north of the old centre, at the heart of a new residential quarter called Vinhomes Central Park. A public park runs along the river in front of it.

What is in it

The base is a shopping centre of several floors, with an ice rink and a cinema, which opened on 26 July 2018. The lower and middle floors are apartments and offices. A hotel occupies floors 47 to 71, with 223 rooms. It opened under the Vinpearl name and has since joined Marriott’s Autograph Collection.

The observation deck, called SkyView, opened in April 2019 on floors 79, 80 and 81. The highest level is partly open to the air. From it the whole city can be seen: the bends of the river, the towers of District 1, the low sprawl to the west and, to the east, the new city rising at Thu Thiem.

For travellers

The tower is fifteen minutes by taxi from the Opera House and the hotels of Dong Khoi Street. The river bus, which runs from Bach Dang pier in the centre, stops near it and is the pleasantest way to arrive. The deck is at its best in the hour before sunset. The dry season, from December to April, gives the clearest air.

Until 2018 the city’s tallest building was the Bitexco Financial Tower in District 1, which has its own deck at a lower level and a closer view of the old centre. The city’s first metro line, which opened at the end of 2024, has a station within reach of Landmark 81. For hotels in the historic centre, see Park Hyatt Saigon and The Reverie Saigon.