“A City With No Smoke and No Sound” - Hun Sen's Cambodia - page 161

climb the wooden stairs into the top story of his home—an airy space with an audacious
swooping ceiling—so we sat downstairs at his dining-room table, surrounded by wooden
shelves lined with topics on topics ranging from Angkorian history and the art of the
Renaissance to ancient Tunisia and nineteenth-century Paris. From time to time, Moly-
vann glanced up at the shelves, his eyes darting owl-like behind his glasses, and asked
an assistant to fetch another tome. “The red book,” he instructed in Khmer, extending a
finger, and then changing his mind. “No, the black one.”
With black book in hand, Molyvann's eyebrows twitched as he tirelessly hunted down
a phrase. To explain his architectural philosophy, Molyvann quoted extensive passages
from his treatise, Khmer Cities —an answer to the uncontrolled development that he says
is slowly sweeping away Phnom Penh's heritage. “During the present government era
there has been no urban planning about Phnom Penh. It is very grave ,” he said, pronoun-
cing it the French way. “They have no planning—no economic plan, no urban plan, no
financial resources to develop the plan.”
Born in Kampot in 1926, Molyvann was one of the first Cambodians to earn his bac-
calauréat from the Lycée Sisowath in Phnom Penh. After graduating, he won a bursary
to pursue his studies in Paris, where he studied architecture at the École Nationale
Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, exposing himself to the work of the Swiss-born modernist Le
Corbusier. “I was not a direct student under Le Corbusier, but he was really my master,”
Molyvann said. When the young architect returned to Cambodia in 1956, Prince Sihan-
ouk appointed him head of the city's urban planning and housing department. The prince
was the perfect patron, giving Molyvann free rein to experiment with a new vernacu-
lar—a striking hybrid form that encapsulated the hope and optimism of an ancient civil-
ization taking its first steps as a modern nation-state.
Over the next 15 years Phnom Penh doubled in size as swamps were drained and land
was reclaimed from the Tonlé Bassac. 19 It became a garden city dominated by the eaves
and spires of its Royal Palace and the daring, jagged visions of Molyvann and the Kh-
mer modernists. When Lee Kuan Yew visited Cambodia in April 1967 he was impressed.
Cruising along in one of Sihanouk's Mercedes convertibles, the Singaporean premier re-
portedly turned to his host and mused, “I hope, one day, my city will look like this.” 20
After the cataclysms of the civil war and the Khmer Rouge, invocations of prewar Phnom
Penh—the “Pearl of Asia” and the “Paris of the East”—would be accompanied by bitter-
sweet backward glances.
Molyvann fled to Europe shortly after Sihanouk's overthrow in 1970; when he and his
wife returned to their old home on Mao Tse Toung Boulevard in 1993, he found a set
of water skis that had lain undisturbed for more than 20 years. Since then Molyvann has
watched his creations disappear one by one, overtaken by uncoordinated urban develop-
ment and runaway land speculation. The Preah Suramarit National Theater, inspired by