Auguste Henri Vildieu was the French architectural adjutant

Adjutant

Adjutant is a military rank or appointment. In some armies, including most English-speaking ones, it is an officer who assists a more senior officer, while in other armies, especially Francophone ones, it is an NCO , normally corresponding roughly to a Staff Sergeant or Warrant Officer.An Adjutant...

 in Hanoi

Hanoi

Hanoi , is the capital of Vietnam and the country's second largest city. Its population in 2009 was estimated at 2.6 million for urban districts, 6.5 million for the metropolitan jurisdiction. From 1010 until 1802, it was the most important political centre of Vietnam...

 while that city was an administrative center for the French colony

Colony

In politics and history, a colony is a territory under the immediate political control of a state. For colonies in antiquity, city-states would often found their own colonies. Some colonies were historically countries, while others were territories without definite statehood from their inception....

 of Indochina

Indochina

The Indochinese peninsula, is a region in Southeast Asia. It lies roughly southwest of China, and east of India. The name has its origins in the French, Indochine, as a combination of the names of "China" and "India", and was adopted when French colonizers in Vietnam began expanding their territory...

. Vildieu constructed several grand European-style buildings for the colonial government

Government

Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...

, including:

• the Bureaux et Résidences Supérieure
• the Mairie (City Hall)
• the Palais de Justice (Supreme Court)
• the post office
  Post office
  A post office is a facility forming part of a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail.Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies...
  
  
• the Presidential Palace
  Presidential Palace
  A Presidential Palace is the official residence of the president in some countries. However, some countries do not call the official residence of a head of state a presidential palace...
  
   (then known as the Palace of the Governor-General of Indochina)
• the Public Works
  Public works
  Public works are a broad category of projects, financed and constructed by the government, for recreational, employment, and health and safety uses in the greater community...
  
   Building
• the prison
  Prison
  A prison is a place in which people are physically confined and, usually, deprived of a range of personal freedoms. Imprisonment or incarceration is a legal penalty that may be imposed by the state for the commission of a crime...
  
  

Vildieu may also have been involved with the construction of the local Roman Catholic cathedral

Cathedral

A cathedral is a Christian church that contains the seat of a bishop...

.
Interestingly, while Vildieu spent most of his working life designing French buildings in Vietnam

Vietnam

Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

, he early on designed a Vietnamese building in France

France

The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 for the 1889 Universal Exposition. This pavilion

Pavilion (structure)

In architecture a pavilion has two main meanings.-Free-standing structure:Pavilion may refer to a free-standing structure sited a short distance from a main residence, whose architecture makes it an object of pleasure. Large or small, there is usually a connection with relaxation and pleasure in...

 was modeled on the porch of the Pagoda of Quan Yen, and was referred to at the Exposition as the "Palace of Annan and Tonkin".