Modernism and Architecture

Brigitte Le Normand details the intersections between architectural infrastructure and political plans in Belgrade. Tito envisioned hygienic and functional spaces would create modern subjects in Belgrade. While architects designed tall apartment buildings with green spaces and social infrastructures such as schools within each neighborhood, residents also desired detached American homes. Perceptions of an American separate house interact with state goals of more egalitarian housing. Rural migration into Belgrade and a lack of affordable housing created a situation Le Normand terms rogue construction. 

In the case of Cambodia, the Sihanouk regime envisioned architecture that would enable a construction of a national identity with national following independence from France. Scholars have begun to examine more critically the infrastructures of modernity in Cambodia in the 1953-1970 postcolonial period which includes architecture. While in my research, I examine the infrastructure of music termed “modern music,” I’ve decided to focus on an architect this week, especially because of Vikramaditya Prakash’s excerpt on Le Courbusier. I selected the work of architect Vann Molyvann, the subject of a documentary entitled The Man Who Built Cambodia. Following independence from France, the Sihanouk regime hired Vann Molyvann to design buildings in Phnom Penh under the concept New Khmer architecture. Vann Molyvann born in 1926 and in 1946 Vann received a government scholarship to study in Paris where the work of Le Corbusier significantly influenced Vann’s designs. For example, Vann noted similarities between Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye and wooden stilt houses in the countryside and proposed urban housing called “100 houses.” 

http://www.vannmolyvannproject.org/archive#/100-houses/

http://www.phnompenhpost.com/7days/vann-molyvann-my-legacy-will-disappear