Greetings from Battambang

Former Pepsi Bottling Plant, 1960's, with its last employee

Battambang is Cambodia’s second largest city and is in many ways a smaller scale doppelganger for Phnom Penh. It also has an Art Deco central market, just smaller. It has wide avenues on axis with monuments and the beautiful French Colonial Governor’s Mansion; those streets are just less crowded. The main avenue even features a grouping of school complexes, as does the capital, only instead of housing the country’s top universities the well designed buildings are a local high school, a primary school and a teacher training center.

I am not clear on the political relationship between the two cities, located a solid 5 hour drive apart. I do know that Battambang was the origin of Lon Nol’s coup d’état in 1970, which sent King Norodom Sihanouk into exile and effectively marked the end of the New Khmer Architecture movement. The city is considered by Phnom Penh folk as part of the backwards “provinces” mostly because of its relative somnolence. Its examples of New Khmer architecture are few and far between, although it does sport a clever design for a jute mill by Vann Molyvann and Battambang University, a design by Ung Krapum Phka which draws from the university complexes in Phnom Penh. However, the city has many fine examples of French Colonial architecture and some examples of Art Deco buildings which seem to be early bridges between the two styles; mixtures of Art Deco and the roof forms and covered porticos common of the French Colonial style.

On my way to Vann Molyvann’s factory I came upon this old Pepsi Bottling Plant which also seemed to be a bridge between movements, only the two later ones. It featured some of the details common of the New Khmer, while its expressive elements were Art Deco. I don’t know anything about the story of the building. However, there was an old man sweeping the grounds, and when I asked him if I could go inside he politely said no, but gave me some of his story instead. He had been working there for 45 years since it was first built as an ice factory. Now, the plant is closed down and he is the last one left on the payroll. He sleeps in a shed alone and tends the gardens and grounds while the building itself has not been occupied for almost 10 years. I didn't follow what happened to the factory during the Khmer Rouge years, but not all of the factories were shut down then and it’s possible that he had just worked through it.

Now the building will likely meet the fate of many of the factories in this city, which were torn down by land speculators. Again, you wonder what will be put up in their place, but it likely won’t be the manufacturing that provided jobs for the residents here. This is just one more example of the government chasing foreign cash while its people are left to suffer.

National Bank of Cambodia

Central Bank Branch in Sihanoukville, left, Staff Housing, right. Vann Molyvann, 1968.

Sihanoukville, planned (if not executed) by Vann Molyvann, is also home to two of his better works. Perhaps because of their distance from the better known buildings in Phnom Penh, M. Vann’s National Bank of Cambodia Branch and his St. Michel Church are not high on the Molyvann canon. However, they were well worth making the trip down south for.

Because the paper notes for Cambodian Currency were made in France and shipped over, it made sense to build the central bank branch for the Cambodia Bank close to the shipping ports. The story goes that when the Khmer Rouge took over the port they attempted to blow up the bank but could do nothing but damage the vaults. They had been designed too well, modeled after the construction of Swiss Banks. However, the blasting left the foundations unsound, and before the bank could be up and running again, extensive repairs had to be executed some time in 2000.

The most striking element of the bank is the huge roof top pergola, a sculpted form made from reinforced concrete. From the ground it looks like it is the roof of a set back upper story but in fact, characteristic of New Khmer, it is raised off of the actual roof of the building, protecting it from the sun and providing a shaded outdoor space accessible from the top floor. It is most probably the largest example of this kind of pergola in the country.

The bank is actually part of a complex of houses and apartments for bank workers. Here again we see Vann Molyvann incorporating traditional Khmer ways of living in a modern home. The exterior brick wall breaks down to become a screen where there is an interior courtyard. The expressive roof form slopes to a gutter that runs along the centerline of the house.

If Architecture represents the triumph of man over wilderness, order over disorder, often it seems that in Cambodia the architecture gets lost in that battle. This is not true of the Bank Complex. Its buildings are composed of sharp geometries, its grounds carefully manicured, and sitting up on a hill overlooking the beach it could not be further from the motos buzzing Sihanoukville’s streets. It was an oasis on a trip where often the senses are overloaded by stimuli.

Empty Development

In 1953 following independence from France, Prince Norodom Sihanouk initialized a program of building that would result in over one thousand public buildings and infrastructure projects produced before 1970. It was an unprecedented period of optimism for the country; with the goal that Phnom Penh rival the major capitals of Asia, and Cambodia become a respected actor on the world stage. Starting in the last few years the nation is seeing another huge boom in investment, with virtually all of its major cities undergoing significant expansions.

I was interested in contrasting these two boom periods; who is doing the building now, how have the goals changed, and what is the paradigm that is driving these new plans? What I have found is that the two periods couldn’t possibly be more different. Prince Sihanouk’s plan was to both spur and structure further development through investment in the public realm. Today, Hun Sen believes his government’s role is to sell off big pieces of the country to private investors hailing mostly from China and Korea. It is illegal for a foreigner to own property in Cambodia, a law which has provided the government ample opportunities to profit from these transactions. So land speculation and prices around Phnom Penh are booming, but building is not. Or at least not as much as one would think given the amount of investment.

The most notable physical markers of this speculation are the walls that were built to contain these large swaths of purchased property. They are present particularly outside of Phnom Penh, where the planned developments reach out from the city like spider’s legs following the major roadways. The walls are often significant constructions, about 12 feet in height, going on seemingly forever, following the contours of the land. It isn’t always clear if these containers mark where buildings once were or if they have only ever contained empty land. But the emptiness serves as sharp contrast to the period of building that birthed the New Khmer style.

Judging from the few renderings I have seen posted, the walls will contain residential subdivisions that could be anywhere, and likely won’t have buyers for years. Others will likely be factories as there are quite a few textile manufacturers here, outsourced from China. There are a few notable exceptions to this sprawl, including a much criticized and unattractive 45 story tower going up in the city center. Most of what is built now speaks the anonymous and non-contextual language of global commerce, while Phnom Penh looses the character that defined it since the French colonial period.

Greetings from Sihanoukville

Sihanoukville Station, 1960. 

Sihanoukville was a sleepy fishing village on the Gulf of Thailand when its coastal waters were identified some time in the early 50s as ideal for a deep-water shipping port, one that could help fuel the further modernization of the new nation. The United States provided money and engineering expertise to carve National Route 4 out of the Cambodian jungle, connecting the capital Phnom Penh to this new town, which was named after Prince Norodom Sihanouk, naturally. Wealthy Cambodians used the new highway to visit Sihanoukville from the capital making its beaches part of a new “Khmer Riviera”.

Vann Molyvann helped plan the port, a large part of which was constructed on land-fill, and designed the master plan for the adjoining town. He designed separate areas for tourism, downtown commercial and administrative districts, high and lower density residential zones, open space and an industrial zone by the port. The zones were connected by a roadway system that was phased to feed future expansion and incorporated separate bicycle and pedestrian paths. This plan was an example of the advanced zoning principles which Cambodians have still not put into effect in their cities today.

The political turmoil which started in 1970 brought these plans crashing down and they would never become a reality. Until 1979 the port served as an entry point for weaponry, after that it was occupied by squatters, eventually becoming an undistinguished beach town favored by backpackers looking for a cheap place to crash. It still has that feel, although there are plans for future development and positive signs like the renovation of the Independence Hotel.

There are still lingering symbols of what was lost. Sihanoukville Station is certainly one of them. There is no longer passenger train service to the city, and the freight containers dropped off at the port are transported by trucks. The station is abandoned and deteriorated, left to languish much like most of the better laid plans of its day.

Bassac River Front

Municipal Apartments, 1963. Lu Ban Hap.

As part of the new program of building within Phnom Penh, Norodom Sihanouk sought to improve the housing options of the growing population by expanding the city along the Bassac River with modern low-cost housing projects. Vann Molyvann and Lu Ban Hap formed part of a team of international planners headed by the Russian Engineer Vladimir Bodiansky to design the master plan. They were inspired by Le Corbusier’s “Ville Radieuse” to surround the complex of apartment buildings with generous open space. Though both Lu Ban Hap and Vann Molyvann designed housing blocks within the complex, Vann’s was renovated beyond recognition.

Both buildings shared key design elements. They were oriented parallel to the river, and with their enormous size, could have become solid walls cutting off the city from the river front. Thus, open terraces were used to break down their volume, each located adjacent to the kitchen.

The Municipal Apartment building is made up of 468 units, each span the full width to allow for cross ventilation. It is broken into six equal parts, that are connected by catwalks and staircases. These breaks are physical and visual access points to the river. The structure is reinforced concrete with brick infill. Typical to the style, faceted concrete tiles form small openings that regulate the light entering the apartments and the interior stairwell, only now in places they seem to only be containing a jungle of foliage growing from the spaces within the walls.

The government financed project has been occupied by squatters since 1979. It is clear from their state of advanced decay that the complex’s current residents are impoverished and without the means or power to fight demolition plans. The National Theater, designed by Vann Molyvann as part of the master plan, was destroyed last year to make way for a shopping center. It may not seem like such a bad way to provide better living conditions, but recently people displaced by development have been moved far outside of the city proper and have not been compensated. This is a recurring theme as plans for building up the city progress and have already been the cause of violent clashes between residents and strong-men in the employ of the developers while the police look the other way.

Teacher Training College, Russian Boulevard. Part 1.

Main Building, Institute of Languages, 1972. Vann Molyvann

So as not to start at the end and give it all away, I will write about Vann Molyvann’s Teacher Training College on Russian Boulevard, his best and last work in Phnom Penh, in several parts. The building was actually inaugurated in 1972 after Vann Molyvann had already left the country for Switzerland, the home nation of his wife Trudy.

The influence of ancient Angkorian Temples is clear in the raised walkways, moats and Barays (pools of water) that cool while retaining storm water, and the monumental entry guarded by concrete Nagas. These buildings also give the clearest indication, however, of Le Corbusier’s influence in Vann Molyvann’s work (more on that later).

The buildings are now the Institute of Languages, part of the Royal University of Phnom Penh, which is kind of the Harvard of Cambodia. Class was in session when I visited, and it was absolutely packed with students. It made me wonder how these buildings survived the Khmer Rouge. I would say, without too much to go on, that more major school buildings have been recently demolished to make way for the heavy development along the Boulevard than during Pol Pot’s rule from 1975-79. At least, I have heard of two that were demolished in the last two years. To be fair, many have been restored to their former glory as well.

Brick is the most common building material in the country. Easy to make, there are literally piles of it everywhere. While concrete was also commonly used by the 50’s, it was the influence of international engineers that would help raise its use in construction to an art form over the course of the development of the New Khmer style. Still, Vann uses brick liberally here, paying homage to a traditional building material while adding a contrasting element to the concrete that helps also to tie all of the wildly different buildings in the Institute together.

The main building, pictured above, is a striking composition of near Brutalist form. Each floor overhangs the one below, giving the building incredible weight, and creating strong shadow lines. The practical purpose is to provide shade for the windows below. Its surface is heavily carved by the big reveals at the louvered openings between brick panels and the vertical louvers that march across the façade in a composition that alternates from one floor to the other. The honey-combed reinforced concrete roof allows for ventilation of the interior spaces, primarily the cavernous interior hall at the heart of the building. Within the hall a grand scissor stair provides circulation to the three levels above, while a big study room carved out of the second floor provides indirect light to the interior.

In addition to this main building, the institute is made up of a bar of small lecture halls and a library which looks a bit like the orphaned volume knob of a stereo. Each will get its own installment.

Phnom Penh: Paris of the East

Central Phnom Penh: Apartment buildings built in the 1960’s

When Phnom Penh became a player on the international stage around 1950 it was commonly referred to as the “Paris of the East”. This should not be interpreted, I think, as a reference to Cambodia’s French Colonial past or the architecture which represents it. It is palpable still in the design of the city itself. Paris is felt in the wide boulevards on axis with major monuments, smaller scale narrow streets bordered by three to four story shop-houses, apartment blocks with interior courtyards, and heroic buildings at intersections often marking the corner with a curving façade.

In the architecture one sees the white bones of the city’s former glory. The better examples of the French Colonial style are beautiful. The later fabric of buildings built from the 30s to the 60s, from Style Moderne to Bauhaus Modern is solid and still imposing if also frayed at the edges. These buildings are defined by deep balconies, horizontal and vertical brise soleil, sculptural concrete roof pergolas and unglazed screens made up of geometrically interlocking patterns of concrete or brick tiles.

Unlike Paris, Phnom Penh in its current state is not at all a pedestrian friendly city. While the streets teem with activity, there are few traffic lights at intersections and where there are they are barely used. The patterned terra cotta sidewalks are fair game for parking, cooking, eating, sleeping, painting, smelting, welding, and selling, which makes things challenging if you happen to be walking. Whether on foot, on bicycle, or on moto, the only way to get around is to hurl yourself into the barely controlled chaos.

The residents of Phnom Penh live their lives on its streets; in the ground level shops, on the sidewalks and on their balconies. This is an energized public realm which belies the Khmer individual’s laid-back persona, and chaotic as it is, it works. Until the streets flood with nearly knee-high water but I’ll have to get into that later.