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Looking like a futuristic descendant of Angkor Wat, with a cluster of chiselled forms poking above the trees, a genocide museum and research institute, designed by London-based Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, is to be built in Cambodia.
Unveiled 35 years on from the brutal reign of the Khmer Rouge, the Sleuk Rith Institute will incorporate a museum, research centre, graduate school, document archives and research library, set in an expansive new park south of Phnom Penh.
The project is the vision of human rights activist Youk Chhang, 53, who has directed the Documentation Centre of Cambodia since 1995.
He amassed a vast archive detailing the atrocities of the regime led by Pol Pot from 1975-1979, when two million Cambodians were slaughtered.
"We have to live with a long, dark shadow," said Youk Chhang, who lost his sister, aunts and uncles to Pol Pot's reign of terror. "We cannot escape it, but we shouldn't be enslaved by it.
"I want the institute to bring something new and hopeful, and get us out of the mindset of being victims."
The complex will be a centre for genocide studies across Asia, with a strong educational and outreach component.
Over the past two decades, Youk Chhang and his team have compiled an archive of more than a million documents, photographs, tapes and films, and mapped 200 prisons and 20,000 mass graves across the country.


Research centre to highlight Cambodia's brutal history

Youk Chhang, director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, stands behind boxes of microfilms containing documents about Khmer Rouge atrocities.

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Looking like a futuristic descendant of Angkor Wat, with a cluster of chiselled forms poking above the trees, a genocide museum and research institute, designed by London-based Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid, is to be built in Cambodia.
