Sihanouk returned home, but no longer at the helm of state: his coronation as a constitutional king under the 1993 constitution left him without any political power. Photograph: AlamyĪngkor Wat and other great temples could be restored, but the spirit and politics of the 60s could not. Vann also became chief of Apsara, the conservation authority for the Angkor temple complex. His urgent priority was to secure World Heritage status for the long-neglected wonders of Angkor Wat and this was awarded in 1992. In the early 90s, with Cambodia under the supervision of a UN mission, he returned to Phnom Penh. For the next 20 years, he worked as an architect and as a consultant for the UN Habitat and Human Settlements Foundation. Phnom Penh’s status as a potential Asian model city was brutally stopped in its tracks by a US-backed military coup led by General Lon Nol in 1970 that drew Cambodia into the Vietnam war and led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge. When he returned to Cambodia, which had gained independence in 1953, he was made chief architect by Sihanouk. He worked as an architect in Paris for two years, 1954-56. He won a scholarship to study law in France, but switched to architecture studies at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Son of Vann Uk and Quam Pik, Vann was born to a poor family in Kampot province, south-west Cambodia, when it was still a French protectorate. To me he was a great architect, and if he had been a European he would have been world famous.” The architect Helen Grant Ross, co-author of Building Cambodia: New Khmer Architecture 1953-70, told me: ‘‘When foreign architects or organisations like Unesco discover Vann Molyvann’s buildings, they can’t believe that they were built by a Cambodian. The Chaktomuk conference hall by Vann Molyvann. Cities should not be built by landfill but by incorporating water into their design.” It was environmental planning and eco-friendly architecture far ahead of its time. Vann told one French architect: “Cambodia is a society of half-earth, half-water. A moat around the perimeter prevented flooding during the monsoon season, an acute problem in low-lying Phnom Penh. The Olympic Stadium, seating 60,000 people, opened in 1964. “New building should bring tradition and heritage back to life.” The era was dubbed Cambodia’s “golden age”, with new movements not only in architecture, but also in music, film, dance and art. “Modernity should not be inspired superficially by western ideas that destroy all trace of the past,” he said. Vann did not simply erect the new and tear down the past. In 1967, Singapore’s prime minister Lee Kuan Yew led a delegation to Phnom Penh and was so impressed that he asked Sihanouk if he could hire Vann to help plan a new Singapore. Others in the region watched with a mixture of curiosity and envy. More than 100 Vann projects – monuments, villas, the Royal University of Phnom Penh, public housing projects and the port of Sihanoukville – were constructed between 19. ‘New building should bring tradition and heritage back to life,’ he said. The architect’s most famous works in Phnom Penh included the lotus-shaped Independence Monument, the National theatre, the Chaktomuk conference hall, and the National Sports Complex, also known as the Olympic Stadium (though it never hosted the event). Drawing inspiration from the ancient bas-reliefs and designs of the Angkor Wat temple complex, Vann’s style, which came to be known as New Khmer architecture, blended Khmer tradition with the modernist principles he had mastered during studies in Paris.Īfter Norodom Sihanouk abdicated from the Cambodian throne in 1955 in order to enter politics, and became prime minister, he launched a programme of cultural revival, educational expansion and economic development, with Vann in charge of urban planning. In the 1960s he transformed Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, from a colonial backwater into one of the most beautiful and innovative of south-east Asian cities. The architect Vann Molyvann, who has died aged 90, was often described as “the man who built Cambodia”.
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