Page 1 of
2 BOOK
REVIEW Deconstructing Cambodia's modernist
heritage Building
Cambodia by Helen Grant Ross and
Darryl Leon Collins
Reviewed by
Andrew Symon
PHNOM PENH - Despite the
scars of war and strains of poverty, Cambodia's
capital city is visually one of Asia's most
attractive. Now with the peace-time rush towards
modernity and cookie-cutter-shaped urban
development threatening its unique and regionally
unrivalled low-rise scale, Phnom Penh finds itself at
important architectural
crossroads.
Architect Helen Ross and
historian Darryl Collins, two long-term residents
of Cambodia, address this threatened heritage in
their new compelling book, Building Cambodia:
New Khmer Architecture:
1953-1970. A product of careful French
colonial design in the early part of the 20th
century, and a striking Khmer modernist
architectural movement after independence in the
1950s and 1960s, the inland city nestles at the
junction of the Mekong and Tonle Sap Rivers.
As more money and people flow into the
city to share in the new buoyancy of the Cambodian
economy, nondescript, unimaginative glass tower
architecture is beginning to erode the city's old
world character. Arguably historical Phnom Penh is
no longer protected by the time warp created by
the lost years of the Khmer Rouge tyranny of the
1970s and the subsequent two decades of civil war,
upheaval and economic stagnation.
Times
are now better for Cambodians than they have been
for the past 40 years. But whether the city can
preserve its heritage and charm while making wise
choices for future development - and avoid the
fate of the now congested and mostly ugly
Southeast Asian mega-cities elsewhere in the
region - remains to be seen.
It is not
just a matter of protecting French colonial period
boulevards, villas and public buildings - of which
the city has in virtually complete precincts. At
risk also is a very Cambodian legacy in the many
distinctive modernist buildings constructed in the
1950s and 1960s by largely Khmer architects.
It was a true local school of design - a
"new Khmer architecture" - as it was described at
the time. It expressed a fast lost golden age of
optimism and modernization after independence in
1953. Yet this story, and the movement's
architectural legacy, are not well appreciated -
not internationally and perhaps even less so in
Cambodia itself. Ross and Collins attempt to fill
that gap in their magnificent multi-dimensional
new work.
The book, a product of seven
years of research and the beneficiary of a grant
from Japan's Toyota Foundation, was launched in
September at the Foreign Correspondent's Club of
Thailand. Through a rich mix of contemporary and
current photos, it documents an extraordinary
period of construction.
After nearly a
century of colonialism, there was a great
nationalist excitement at being able to shape a
new Cambodia and this was driven by a wave of
public construction inspired by the country's
mercurial head of government, Prince Norodom
Sihanouk.
Young architects, engineers and
town planners newly returned from studies
overseas, mostly in France, enthusiastically
combined Western modernist forms, materials and
functions with traditional Cambodian designs,
practices and local materials. They often drew on
inspiration from the temples at the world-renowned
ancient Angkor complex, although they did not seek
to recreate its monumentalism.
One
structure that especially stands out is the
Institute of Languages, formerly the library for
the teacher's training college. It is a small but
striking circular building whose form was inspired
by the traditional Khmer woven palm leaf hat still
worn throughout the countryside - though the
structure makes use of ribs of concrete rather
than rattan.
Designed by Vann Molyvann,
one of the most influential of the Khmer
architects, and today still living in Phnom Penh,
its circular concrete roof is indented with
concrete rays and seems to almost float in a
circular glass wall. Inside light is filtered by
the careful location of windows so that the
interior is not exposed to intense illuminant
contrasts.
Architects like Molyvann (as
well as the economists, political scientists and
lawyers, including those who would lead the Khmer
Rouge) who went abroad to study after World War II
were the first Cambodians of any significant
number to do so. They returned, Ross and Collins
note, with both the new ideas of Western modernism
- the simplification of form and design following
function - with designs and motifs inspired by
Cambodian historical and contemporary
architectures built in harmony with the country's
tropical environment.
For instance, glass
was not used on the extensive scale common to
Western modernist buildings of the era. Rather -
and sensibly so - there was great reliance on open
spaces and verandahs allowing natural ventilation.
Water was often used as moats around buildings and
in courtyard ponds. Spaces under buildings are
common as well as roof terraces. Concrete was
often combined with brick and stone.
The
largest construction of the era is the National
Sports Complex, finished in 1964 and built on a
40-hectare site originally
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Architecture:
1953-1970. A product of careful French
colonial design in the early part of the 20th
century, and a striking Khmer modernist
architectural movement after independence in the
1950s and 1960s, the inland city nestles at the
junction of the Mekong and Tonle Sap Rivers.
