Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam

Vietnam’s beacon

Landmark 81 reaches for the sky like a bamboo cluster. At a height of 461 meters, the skyscraper has broken all records in the country and is the second-tallest tower in Southeast Asia.

“Isn’t it fascinating that the elevators travel at such high speeds without you actually noticing it?” asks Götz Bauer as the Schindler elevator from the hotel lobby reaches the 48th floor. “In this hotel, the elevators alone are an experience,” he says – and he should know. Since 2022, German-born Götz Bauer has been cluster general manager of the Marriott Autograph Collection, to which the five-star hotel belongs. The floor-to-ceiling windows in its lobby offer breathtaking views across the city whose vastness is only really apparent from above.

“In the last few years, high-rise buildings have shot up like mushrooms in Ho Chi Minh City. The place is really thriving,” says Götz Bauer. The metropolis is home to an estimated nine million people, and it’s also Vietnam’s economic center – not to mention a popular tourist destination. The city on the Saigon River has a new landmark, aptly named Landmark 81, which is a beacon for modern Vietnam. Since it was completed in 2019, it has not only ranked as the tallest building in the entire country but also as the greenest. Offering 140 000 square meters of floor space, the skyscraper incorporates a hotel and shopping mall, as well as apartments, bars, restaurants, and a spectacular viewing platform. A Schindler 7000 elevator transports visitors up to the 81st floor in less than a minute. A total of 28 elevators, equipped with the Schindler PORT technology, and two escalators ensure that people can move around Landmark 81 quickly and safely.

Four kilometers to the south of the building, Landmark 81 Project Director Duong Van Hung is sitting in a meeting room at the local Schindler head office. He explains: “In the entire country, in terms of elevators, nothing comes close to the elevators in Landmark 81. It makes me feel really proud. Our customer Vingroup was very exacting, and we were able to meet all their specifications. We are now working on two more high-rise projects for the same customer.” Vingroup is a Vietnamese conglomerate that is owned by Vinhomes– the country’s largest real estate company and property developer. Vietnam is still in a state of transition and has only been classed as an emerging economy since 2007. Over the last decade, its urban population has swapped their bicycles for mopeds. This is a country where almost anything seems possible and where many things are happening for the first time.

The installation of a high-rise elevator in a 461-meter skyscraper is one example. At the beginning of the construction phase, there were no elevator installation engineers in Vietnam with experience of working on high-rise buildings on the scale of Landmark 81. The reason is clear: Unlike in other Asian cities where dense clusters of gigantic buildings vie for the top spot in the sky, Landmark 81 towers far above the other new high-rise buildings in Ho Chi Minh City.

Skyscrapers such as this sway in strong winds – creating challenges during the installation of the elevator guide rails in particular. However, the Schindler team turned this demanding task into a ­success story and installed 30 elevators within these tight constraints. “We had to deliver a number of customized and innovative solutions. Our success is ultimately down to the fact that the team worked in perfect harmony,” says Service Leader Engineer Le Dinh Bach.

Service Director Nguyen Xuan Yen adds: “We collaborated across different departments to find solutions. The team was able to try out new approaches, such as bringing our service technicians on board during the installation process. Thanks to this training, they already knew the products inside out by the time they were handed over to the customer.” This practice has proven highly successful. As Head Key Account, Dao Minh Quang was responsible for the project from the start of the tendering process: “Our goal was for people to automatically think of Schindler whenever they think about Landmark 81. We achieved that ambition.”