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The formerly elegant
Cambodian capital Phnom Penh is slowly reemerging as a Asian
metropolis, but good life comes back slowly.
Tourists from all over the world in
particular Europeans flying into Phnom Penh and
Siem Reap
-Angkor Wat in
droves to visit the old Cambodian Temple,
Monuments and Pagodas, everyone knows Angkor Wat, Cambodia.
New Cambodian hotels and restored old ones
with the typical French architecture style elements are
plenty, some expensive, some not so, its easy to find a hotel
for every taste and budget in Cambodia.
The bad times of Cambodia are slowly
vanishing into a remote distance and a more modern life takes over,
but very slowly..
Cambodian and US rap wobble out of
totally overturned loudspeaker, sometimes in between - some
Cambodian love songs. The Toyotas are roaring blasting their
diesel smoke into the already not very clean air.
Many excellent
-in- Restaurants are running on full load every evening and
there is a optimistic and swinging atmosphere in the capital of
Cambodia. It is now at peace, and attention can
finally turn to having a good life.
View
from Phnom Penh
In April 1967, Lee Kwan Yew was invited to
Phnom Penh by Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Cruising along the
capital's elegant boulevards in his Mercedes convertible, the
Singaporean premier turned to his host and mused, 'I hope, one day, my
city will look like this'. |
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Phnom Penh night view |
Eight years after Lee's visit, Phnom Penh
lay charred and abandonedKhmer Rouge soldiers had dynamited the
National Bank and cathedral. The Art Deco Bibliotheque became a
makeshift kitchen for
Chinese advisers to Pol Pot staying at a decrepit
Hotel Le Royal next door. Books were used as firewood. Pigs and chickens
roamed its corridors.
Today Cambodia is finally at peace and Phnom
Penh is undergoing a remarkable transformation. Roads are being
re-paved, colonial villas repainted and fountains turned back on after
28 years. And, while belated, the rich architectural legacy that
survived the wars is beginning to attract the attention it deserves, as
well as considerable concern. |
Phnom Penh Buddhist temple |
At the heart of the tourist agenda is the Royal Palace and the
great National Museum next door, which
houses the best collection of antiquity from Angkor's temples outside
the Musee Guimet in Paris.
George Groslier's 1920 masterpiece of
Khmer-French architecture boasts a vast angled terracotta-coloured roof
supported by massive teak beams.
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Lovers of Art Deco
can admire Hotel Le Royal, the nerve centre
of war correspondents pre-Pol Pot, since lavishly restored by the
Raffles hotel chain. Phnom Penh's cathedral is lost for ever, but along
the same quiet tree-lined street where it once stood are numerous
handsome colonial edifices all hardly changed in 50 years, along with
the railway station, the ochre bank and post office, not to mention the
archives and a reinvigorated Bibliotheque (sans cochons).
Phnom Penh ladder wagon transport Cambodia |
For me, however, Phnom Penh's real
architectural legacy is not colonial but Modernist, fusing postwar
French trends (and a celebratory use of concrete) with the indigenous
motifs of
Angkorian antiquity.
Called 'New Khmer Architecture', the
unique hybrid flourished over the decade and a half following the end of
French rule in 1953, but ended abruptly with the coup that deposed
Sihanouk in 1970 and led ultimately to 30 years of civil war.
The architect responsible for
the majority of these structures is 78-year-old Vann Molyvann.
The first Cambodian to be trained in Europe,
at
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the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, he came
directly under the influence of Le Corbusier. Vann Molyvann used the Modulor in Phnom Penh
during the 1960s, enlisting the services of engineer Vladimir Bodiansky
and the town planner Henning, both of whom provided technical assistance
to the UN during the period. But the essence of his style comes, he
insists, from Angkor Wat and Khmer antiquity, his own architectural
heritage. |
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Phnom Penh Cambodia
Sothearos Blvd. Phnom Penh
Cambodia national assembly |
He was to Sihanouk as Christopher Wren was to Charles II or
Shusiev to Stalin. The prince and his leading architect planned
well over 100 projects as part of an ambitious urban renewal
program aimed at dragging Cambodia out of the political
backwater, while simultaneously proclaiming the country's
newfound self-confidence and sovereignty. |
Examples are liberally scattered around Phnom Penh.
However, the most obvious symbol of this new national identity is the
Independence Monument that stands defiantly on Norodom Boulevard, the
broad thoroughfare that joins the old colonial section to the modern
zone developed during the '60s. Directly emulating the Arc de Triomphe,
the chocolate-hued structure is, appropriately enough, surrounded by a
profusion of nagas, the mythical protective snakes and kbach, or
Khmer
ornaments.
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Phnom Penh central market
Phnom Penh inside central market |
On the same street, set back from the road in formal gardens, is a
compound of cool, low-slung concrete and brick pavilions with quirky
zigzag roof lines, elevated
Angkor Wat walkways and rhythmical
symmetrical doorways suggestive of Ta Phrom and Preah Khan temples.
Created as a state palace, the complex functions today
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as the Senate and is accessible to the
public when the government is not in session. Similarly elegant is the riverside Bassac Theatre, a brown brick and
concrete structure, with a foyer designed as a series of large triangles
suspended above shallow pools of water and cantilevered staircases.
Diamond patterned red, black and white tiles add splashes of colour,
while louvred ventilation provides light and air. Sadly, the auditorium
was gutted by fire in 1994, forcing performers to move downstream to the
Chaktomuk Theatre at the point where the Mekong, Tonle and Bassac rivers
converge. Conceived in 1961 as a Buddhist conference hall, the
fan-shaped building deploys, once again, triangles and zigzags as
unifying motifs.
Phnom Penh sunset Cambodia |
The 80 000-seat National Sports Complex, which opened
concurrently with Kenzo Tange's more famous stadium in Tokyo in 1966, is
perhaps the strongest statement about friendship between nations and
hosted the Asian Games of the same year.
Besides the four vast concrete
towers, the stadium has a stunning cantilevered roof and large
ornamental pools that directly imitate the barays, or traditional
reservoirs of Angkor Wat.
More allusions to Khmer antiquity can be found
at the School of Foreign Languages on Pochentong Boulevard, where
another naga-protected walkway leads the visitors over barays of water.
To one side is a tiny circular library of ribbed concrete. |
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Vann Molyvann recently became the subject of a major study, Building
Cambodia: New Khmer Architecture 1953-1970, by ARK (Architectural
Research Khmer), a group comprising architect Hok Sokol, art historian
Darryl Collins and the architect-urbanist Helen Grant Ross. Due to be
published this year, one of its aims is the creation of an inventory of
all Cambodian architecture from the period. Vann Molyvann, Collins
asserts, was not alone but merely the greatest and most prolific of a
group of architects working in his employ, most of whom died during the
civil wars. A good example is perhaps the Chenla, Lu Ban Hap's
eccentric, abstract theatre where Sihanouk hosted his so-called
international film festivals.
But ARK has major concerns, the main one
being that Cambodian architectural students have little knowledge of the
creative flowering following independence. (Ironically, when so much of
modern Cambodian identity is subsumed by the overwhelming power of
Angkor and the
Angkorian
empire on the national psyche.) As a result,
neglect, botched restorations and inadvertent destruction are still
serious threats to the survival of twentieth-century buildings. Many
renovations are neither up to standard nor conducted transparently. The
Bassac Theatre remains in a state of suspended animation, while
officials at the Ministry of Culture fight over the money needed to
restore it. The Chenla has been annexed by an ugly, circular restaurant.
The restoration of the Sports Complex was handed over to a Taiwanese
company so that the perimeter could be developed with commercial
outlets. Results were poor and served only to suffocate this once
imposingly voluminous space. More responsive and imaginative approaches
are greatly needed, so that this distinctive period of Indo-Chinese
Modernism can be truly appreciated once more.
Architectural Review, The, by Robert Turnbull
COPYRIGHT EMAP Architecture - COPYRIGHT Gale Group |
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