By Bo Hill
ABC News
It would be difficult to walk around the Cambodian capital, Phnom Penh, without coming across an example of the magic of Vann Molyvann.
The architect, who will turn 90 next year, was a product of Cambodia's golden era beginning in the mid-1950s. Throwing off the shackles of French colonial rule, the country, led by King Sihanouk, revelled in nearly two decades of a cultural renaissance that became the envy of the region.
Vann Molyvann returned from studying architecture in Europe, bringing with him a modernist style, and began creating buildings that fused the popular design technique with Cambodian traditions.
Filmmaker Christopher Rompré, who directed the soon-to-be-released documentary on Vann Molyvann's life The Man Who Built Cambodia, says the architect's designs were "inspired".
"It's a very humanised, sustainable version of modernist architecture that really isn't found anywhere else in the world," Rompré said.
"Cambodia had recently become independent and it was searching for an identity and King Sihanouk forged this, through architecture, through arts, through film, dance, music, all these things. [The king] was really spearheading this [movement] that was drawing on the past, reaching back before colonialism to the ancient Angkorian time - drawing from that but also fusing it with these really fresh, modern sensibilities.
"You had Angkorian hippy rock'n'roll emerging. You had a really creative, vibrant film scene. The trajectory of Vann Molyvann's architecture perfectly mirrored this flourishing Cambodian culture."
One of Vann Molyvann's most popular buildings is the National Stadium, or Olympic Stadium. It was commissioned by the king who asked Mr Molyvann to finish the project within two years. It remains a popular public space for city residents.
"The space can be used in so many different ways," Rompré said.
"There's people sitting around and talking, you've got dance classes and aerobic classes that are free to the public, people running around the track, you've got soccer games going on. The bench run in continuous lines around the stadium so people run through the stands. It's a place where people gather to watch the sunset because it's one of the highest vantage points in the city.
"It's a very special place that attracts hundreds and thousands of people every night."
A lauded career's work under threat
Vann Molyvann's career was cut short when Lon Nol came to power after a coup in the early 1970s. Being a close associate of the deposed king made Vann Molyvann a target, so he was forced to flee Cambodia to Switzerland.
Many of his iconic structures remained, surviving American bombings, Vietnamese occupation and the Khmer Rouge regime. But the pressures of a modernising Cambodia in recent years has put his work under threat.
In 2008 the National Theatre and Council of Ministers building were torn down.
And the much-loved National Stadium is now surrounded by high-rise developments.
"One of the city's defining features is an almost complete lack of public space," Rompré said.
"There's a lot of private, luxury buildings that have nice gyms and pools but there's almost no park land in Phnom Penh where people who don't have a lot of money can gather.
"When [Cambodians] lose a park, or the National Stadium, the things that replace it are always going to be very expensive, luxury residences. The fight is to maintain these public spaces and these buildings in order to preserve some space for people without money," he said.
Rompré and producer Haig Balian hope their new documentary will bring greater attention to that fight.
The Man Who Built Cambodia began as a biography of Vann Molyvann, but Rompré said the further he and Balian researched into the renowned architect, the more they were urged to make the documentary something more.
"It became increasingly clear as we worked on this that so many of the issues and the things that happened in Vann Molyvann's life later on really have a bearing on the way Cambodia is developing today," he said.
"He had a blossoming in the '60s and then his work was cut off in the Khmer rouge era and then when he returned [from exile] he's been facing all these challenges in terms of the Cambodia he returned to being a lot different from the one that he left and being dominated by a different set of values."
Vann Molyvann has become a critic of Cambodia's recent urban development schemes, and Rompré says he hopes the documentary will remind Cambodians of the architect's innovative approach to sustainable, and accessible, architecture.
"The prime minister [Hun Sen] is far more focused on business and saying 'if you want to build it, build it, we're not going to over-think things, we're not going to plan the city, we're just going to get it back on it's feet.' The trend has been to develop and develop."
A crowdfunding campaign is underway for the documentary which Rompré and Balian hope to release by the end of May.
"It became clear to us that a lot of people really care about this story being told right. [Vann Molyvann] represents a lot for Cambodians, not just in terms of architecture but also a certain philosophy that existed in the 1960s that a lot of people want to bring back into Cambodia's consciousness today."
No comments:
Post a Comment