1960s Khmer Architecture

Story briefIn the 1960s Khmer art and culture was in full stride, with city planning and construction a huge priority for the emerging democracy. Vann Molyvann, a leading Khmer architect and student of Le Corbusier was leading the charge. The Olympic Stadium, the National Theater, universities, government buildings, churches and private buildings were all built in the 1960s.
Molyvann and his contemporaries were forming a Khmer style of modernism. It was an approach that merged its unique tradition and environment with the worldwide modernist movement.

The civil war of the 1970s silenced the construction of the 1960s. But although Molyvann and others escaped death in the Khmer Rouge era, they are not able to save the country's current lack of attention to saving the remnants of the 1960s.

Squatters pose fire threats, like the one that destroyed Molyvann's National Theater in 1994, as do "renovations" that are done behind closed doors and without a premium on restoring the old. The Olympic Stadium is currently undergoing such a renovation. Plans are difficult to obtain, and many changes occur behind the fences on the construction site.

Tourists can visit the port town of Sihanoukville and see squatters taking apart decorative pieces of the abandoned Independence Hotel. Offer a price, and you too could walk away with elaborate but rusted wrought iron gates.

Several expatriats are bringing this problem to the attention of the public. Reyum, an institute of arts and culture in Phnom Penh co-run by American Ingrid Muan recently exhibited and published a book on Khmer culture in the 1960s. The book includes a lengthy interview with Molyvann. Also, Darryl Collins (art historian at the Royal University of Fine Arts), Helen Grant Ross (Architect/Urbanist) and Hok Sokol (Architect), and are finishing two years of research on 1950s and 1960s Khmer architecture. The research is titled "Building Cambodia: New Khmer Architecture 1953-1970" and may lead to published work on Khmer modernism.