Historical figure
Vann Molyvann
វណ្ណ ម៉ូលីវណ្ណ
Vann Molyvann (វណ្ណ ម៉ូលីវណ្ណ) was a Cambodian architect and urban planner, and a central figure of the style called New Khmer Architecture.[1][2] As state architect in the years after independence, he designed many of the landmarks of Phnom Penh, among them the Independence Monument, the Chaktomuk Conference Hall and the National Sports Complex.[3][4]
Early life and training
He was born in Ream, in Kampot province, in November 1926.[1] At 20 he went to Paris to study law, and then turned to architecture.[5] His architecture degree came from the Beaux-Arts school in Paris, and Atlas Obscura writes that Le Corbusier was among his teachers there.[2] A Norton University profile names Le Corbusier, Rudolph and Wright among the architects whose work inspired him in Paris.[6] He came home to Cambodia in 1956.[5][6]
State architect
Prince Norodom Sihanouk chose him to remake the capital,[2] and soon after his return he became state architect and head of public works.[5] By 1957, aged 31, he was the government's chief architect and headed the office for housing and city planning in the Ministry of Public Works and Telecommunications.[6] He was secretary of state for that ministry as well, set up the Royal University of Fine Arts, and inspected the country's ancient monuments.[3]
From 1957 to 1971 he created or oversaw more than seventy projects, most of them in the capital.[6] Next City lists a new airport, sewers, dikes, parks, universities, hospitals, theaters and public housing among the work of those years. The area of Phnom Penh doubled, and from 1962 to 1970 its population grew from about 400,000 to more than a million.[5] In 1962 he drew up plans, shaped by the region's flood patterns, that split the city into three parts: the historic center, newer districts and areas still to be developed.[6]
His buildings included the Senate, the National Theater, the Council of Ministers and the Chaktomuk Conference Hall.[4] He also designed the Independence Monument, with a tower drawn from Angkor, and the Royal University of Phnom Penh.[5] He designed the White Building,[2] which with the Grey Building made up Cambodia's first public housing projects.[5] He counted the National Sports Complex as his greatest work.[5] The stadium was finished in 1964, after only eighteen months of building.[4] Its design drew on the way the builders of Angkor worked with earth and water: channels inside it carried rainwater from the roof to pools at its base.[2]
New Khmer Architecture
New Khmer Architecture adapted modernist forms and materials to the tropical climate, with motifs from village buildings and from Angkor.[5] Vann Molyvann worked from the measurements of Le Corbusier's Modulor system, combined with those of the Angkorian temples and their water management.[6] In the 2014 documentary The Man Who Built Cambodia, he explained that he studied Le Corbusier because Le Corbusier built on stilts, and Cambodians had lived in houses on stilts since prehistoric times.[2] The urban planner Helen Grant Ross has described the style as one that arose on its own in Cambodia, not a copy of European models.[2]
Exile and return
After Sihanouk was deposed in 1970, Vann Molyvann sent his wife and children to Europe, and in 1971 he left Cambodia himself.[6] In exile he lived in Switzerland and worked for the United Nations on affordable housing.[2][3] Nearly all his drawings were destroyed after he left.[4]
He came back in 1991, after the Paris Peace Accords.[2][5] He was the first director of the APSARA National Authority, which manages the Angkor area, and served as Minister of Culture and of Education.[1] In Next City's account, he was removed from APSARA in 2001, at the request of Prime Minister Hun Sen, after he spoke out against tourism building that damaged Angkor.[5] He later represented King Sihanouk at meetings of the International Coordinating Committee for Angkor.[3]
Later years
In 2003 he published Modern Khmer Cities, a study of Phnom Penh, Siem Reap and Sihanoukville, which he called his political manifesto. He received a doctorate in 2008 and became a public critic of the way Phnom Penh was being built.[5] Speaking of his buildings, he told Next City that it was hard to sit and watch the destruction of "my children".[5]
Many of his buildings were lost or altered in his lifetime. The National Theater burned in 1994 and its remains were pulled down in 2008, the same year the Council of Ministers building was demolished.[2][4] The National Sports Complex was leased to a Taiwanese company in 2000, and its drainage channels were filled with cement, and the grounds have often flooded since.[5]
He died at his home in Siem Reap on September 28, 2017, at the age of 90.[7]
Legacy
The Vann Molyvann Project, founded in 2009 by the Canadian architect Bill Greaves, documents his buildings and other modernist architecture in Cambodia, and makes measured drawings of the buildings that remain.[4] The architect Hok Sokol told The Cambodia Daily that Vann Molyvann's work is a lesson for architects, because he learned from others and made what he learned his own.[3]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Angkor Database, Molyvann Vann (undated)
- ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 Atlas Obscura, Vittoria Traverso, The Architect Who Married Modernism and Ancient Khmer Style (October 13, 2017)
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 The Cambodia Daily, Ouch Sony, Remembering New Khmer Style and Vann Molyvann's Legacy (September 4, 2017)
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 The Vann Molyvann Project, The Project (undated)
- ↑ 5.00 5.01 5.02 5.03 5.04 5.05 5.06 5.07 5.08 5.09 5.10 5.11 5.12 Next City, Daniel Otis, Phnom Penh's Most Famous Urban Planner Sees a City on the Verge of Collapse (December 31, 2013)
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 6.5 6.6 Norton University, Architectural Explorations: Vann Molyvann, NU Newsletter (2022), page 72
- ↑ Open Development Cambodia, from The Phnom Penh Post, Khouth Sophak Chakrya and Erin Handley, Architect Vann Molyvann dies in Siem Reap at 90 (September 28, 2017)