As promised, in between our more project-based updates, i’ll also be sharing a few more general posts regarding contemporary Cambodia. To get started, here are a few images from the remarkable ruined mansions of Kep, taken during our fact-finding visit last year.
Kep is a few hours from Phnom Penh, and from the turn of the century to the 1960s it was one of the main beach retreats for the ruling elite. Cue some fantastic early modernist architecture, including works by Vann Molyvann, a student of Le Corbusier and probably Cambodia’s most famous architect.
During the Khmer Rouge regime, the mansions were abandoned and subject to heavy fighting throughout the period. In a story familiar across the country, when the regime ended, people returned to the area and some of the buildings were reinhabited on an ad hoc basis. However, many were severely damaged and have remained unused ever since.
The result is eerily beautiful: with ornate walls surrounding now-vacant lots, and a disarmingly numerous set of abandoned facades and shells that populate the whole area, slowly returning to the jungle, sketching out the faded past of the old town. Walking around, it almost feels like you’re drifting into some parallel American reality, stumbling across the future ruins of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin…
Perhaps the most notable exception is the hotel now know as Knai Bang Chatt - a beautiful set of buildings by Molyvann’s students, originally designed to house senior officials including the Chief of Customs. Its now restored into an upmarket hideaway for Phnom Penh’s international set (i guess the next generation of “elites”). We took a quick peek inside and its an amazing space.
With its combination of sophistication and absolute desolation, the whole area is a complex diagram of the strange ways in which cultural flows, artistic inspirations, political influence and military power have wound back forth between Cambodia and the rest of the world over the past hundred years.
