Wherever Madame Nhu lives today, it can't be half as glamorous as the place she left behind. Ousted by a 1963 coup that resulted in the assassinations of her husband and his bachelor brother, President Ngo Dinh Diem, the first lady of South Vietnam -- now reportedly living in Paris -- sacrificed a 100-room palace that Diem commissioned but never used. Still standing in the middle of Ho Chi Minh City, Reunification Palace is the sexiest building in Southeast Asia. And yet, despite the fame of its French-trained architect, Ngo Viet Thu; the dragon-lady reputation of Madame Nhu (Life called her the most ''devious'' beauty ''anywhere east of Suez''); and the breathtaking folly of its wartime construction, the White House of South Vietnam remains an edifice obscure.
In fact, there seems to have been only one recorded comment about it, and that was negative. As the 65,000-square-foot building neared completion in 1966, Senator Stephen M. Young, an Ohio Democrat, sparked an uproar by proclaiming that the South Vietnamese government siphoned off $2 million in U.S. aid to pay for teak floors and 100 fountains. The South Vietnamese were predictably offended -- there is only one modest fountain -- and the survivors of the Diem regime still bristle over it.
''We had quite enough money to build it without outside help,'' said former Vice President Nguyen Cao Ky, whose memoir, ''Buddha's Child: My Fight to Save Vietnam,'' was published last year. Talking by cellphone from his home in California, Ky proudly added that he cut the ribbon at the opening ceremonies, an act memorialized by a plaque that the Communists left in place. And that's not all that has been left untouched. Since Communist tanks crashed through its gilt-iron gates at 11.30 a.m. on April 30, 1975, Reunification Palace has been preserved in curatorial amber, maintained as a museum and erstwhile venue for government conferences and entertaining.
The palace that Thu built is deliriously glamorous, a lip-smacking mix of Turandot melodrama and James Bond cool. Walls sprout gilded sconces the size of industrial-strength woks. Ceilings drip with blocky chandeliers. A reception room is sheathed in gold lacquer and scattered with Parsons tables, while the den is a 1960's rec room writ large, right down to the barrel-shaped wet bar and king-size sectional sofa.
''Awfully kitsch and seedy'' was Luc Lejeune's initial reaction. A designer and entrepreneur who is an owner of Ho Chi Minh City's hippest restaurant, Temple Club, Lejeune always thought that Norodom Palace, the building that previously occupied the site -- a Second Empire confection housing the French colonial governors -- was more to his taste. But after repeated visits to its mod replacement, he has altered his opinion: Reunification Palace, Lejeune says now, is ''a fantastic and amazing contradiction -- non-Vietnamese and yet so Vietnamese at the same time.''
The Palace is a charter member of a panoply of structures built under the influence of Edward Durrell Stone's sleek 1959 United States Embassy in New Delhi: a pristine glass box enclosed by a lacy masonry screen, or bris-soleil. But Thu's design departs significantly from Stone's glittery modernism by incorporating nationalist symbols that give it a subtle Indochine spin. For example, the balconied center of the main facade mimics the character for ''prosperity,'' and the building's T shape is derived from the Vietnamese character for good destiny. As for the white concrete screen that shields the building's glass core, Thu conceived it as a stylized thicket of bamboo, grown two stories high.
By contrast, Norodom Palace was assertively Parisian, from its salons to its mansard roof. After it was bombed by renegade South Vietnamese pilots in 1962, Diem announced a contest to build a replacement in the footprint of the old. But the contest was probably just a formality, said Thu's son, Nam-Son Ngo-Viet, an architect who is writing a book about his father, who died three years ago in Ho Chi Minh City.
Then 36, handsome, romantic, a Beaux Arts-trained recipient of the 1955 Prix de Rome, Thu was the most famous architect in Vietnam, and an admired painter to boot. Even illiterate farmers knew his work, thanks to Thu's pioneering ''agrovilles,'' planned agricultural communities composed of do-it-yourself bamboo-and-rattan bungalows. Also, Thu was already a close adviser to the government, an association that would result in a year's stint in a labor camp after the fall of Saigon. Curiously, his competitors' entries were out of step with the young country's worldly ambitions. One team presented a derivative French colonial pile; another suggested a dragon-topped pagoda. Although each of the architects followed the rules, Thu did it with infinitely more style. After all, who but the poetry-writing Thu would give his nation's leaders a private meditation chamber with sweeping views of Saigon?
The palace opened in 1966; two of South Vietnam's last presidents occupied it. The first, Nguyen Van Thieu, turned the rooftop meditation space into a disco. Nguyen Xuan Oanh, who was a finance minister during the palace's construction, recalled ''hoping for something more traditional.'' But, he explained, ''we were going into a new century, so the committee in charge said that a modern building might be more acceptable.'' Also, Oanh said, with a sigh, from his office in Ho Chi Minh City: ''the history of Vietnam is the history of dynasties. When a new dynasty came in, it destroyed all that came before.'' At least, that's what used to happen. The continued survival of Reunification Palace is proof that some conquerors know an architectural triumph when they see one.
Photos: Above: With mod touches and exotic woods, the Reunification Palace is a little like Morris Lapidus does Southeast Asia. The building, to have been South Vietnam's official residence, replaced a bombed-out French colonialist structure. Here, its main staircase.; Left: The doorway to a reception room on an upper floor. Since the structure is basically a glass box sheathed in concrete shutters, sunlight is everywhere and probably faded the original carpets, which have since been replaced.; Opposite page: The ''rumpus room,'' with linoleum floors, gold-leaf beams and laminated shelving. This page, clockwise from top left: A metal-and-glass entry door; the main dining room, dominated by a painting by the architect Ngo Viet Thu; marble-sheathed columns at the entrance; a desk in the middle of a corridor.; Above left: The glass palace's concrete facade, which recalls Edward Durrell Stone's United States Embassy in New Delhi. Above right: A reception room. Opposite: Another reception room, with lacquered paneling and lacquered Parsons tables. The president's desk is purposely higher than the seating for his guests. (James Domingo)