Almost everyone arrives in this part of the world with their eye on ancient stone, and in this particular country that expectation also has an obvious destination three hundred kilometres away. The capital offers something else, far less visited and considerably harder to find anywhere else: a body of modern architecture from the fifties and sixties with a logic of its own.
01 How it fits you
The movement is known as New Khmer Architecture and runs from 1953 to 1970. Its leading figure is Vann Molyvann, who trained abroad and came back to build here; in 1965 architecture began to be taught at the country's royal university of fine arts and he ended up running it. The movement was abruptly interrupted at the beginning of the seventies.
02 What exactly was invented here
What is interesting is not the style but the problem they solved. Building in a climate with highs of 35 degrees, high humidity and 1,400 millimetres of rain a year, without widespread air conditioning, forces cooling to become part of the structure. And that is exactly what they did.
The repertoire is recognisable once you know what to look for: double walls and double roofs, with an air gap between them so the heat never reaches the interior; V-shaped eaves and overhangs that stop the sun entering the window directly; structures raised off the ground so the air can run beneath; and moats and sheets of water that act as a reservoir in the wet season and cool by evaporation.
03 What it will cost you
The first friction is that nobody here is going to explain anything to you. There is no signposted route, no panels, no interpretation centre, and many buildings are working headquarters you cannot enter. You have to arrive with the list and the addresses prepared from home, and accept that much of the trip consists of looking at facades from the pavement opposite.
The second is the heat, and it shapes the timetable more than anything else. With highs of 31 to 35 degrees all year and high humidity, a walking route only works before ten in the morning or after four in the afternoon. The middle hours have to be written off or spent indoors, and that greatly reduces what fits into a day.
The third is more uncomfortable to say: this body of work is at risk. Several buildings remain standing by inertia, without clear protected status and under development pressure, and some have already been lost. What you can walk today is not the original group but the part that has held on, and there is no guarantee it will still be complete in ten years.
04 How I would build these days
Three days in January, with the mornings reserved for walking. Day one: the central market, of 1937, which does not belong to this movement but is the best possible introduction to how people built here against the climate before it, with its cross-shaped plan and ventilated dome; and then the river promenade late in the day.
Day two: the sixties block, on foot and early. The languages institute, with its facade of vertical fins, is the best example of solar shading turned into the building's image; the 1964 sports complex, with its earth banks used as terracing, shows the movement's other idea, which is building with the ground. Day three: the station, the auditorium by the river and slack to return to whatever you liked.
05 The verdict
If you care about how buildings are made to work against a climate, here is a complete and very little visited case study: a country that in fifteen years produced its own answers to a specific physical problem and built them at city scale. And it is covered cheaply, on foot and without queues, because practically nobody comes for this.
If you need a destination to hand it to you ready-made, this one does not and will not. The deciding question is whether you enjoy working out for yourself why an eave has that shape. If the answer is yes, three days here are worth far more than they cost. If the answer is no, the city will reduce to a river junction with a lot of traffic.
Explore this destination
Discover its points of interest, prices, access and everything worth seeing.
Days already sorted
Day-by-day routes for this destination, with stops, timings and what each one costs.
Bernard Gagnon Thimphu for the traveller who accepts that here the trip is priced by the night
Mindia Jalabadze Tbilisi for anyone who travels for wine and wants to see where it comes from
Dmitry G