A last look at icon of Cambodia’s ‘Golden Age’ before it is bulldozed to make way for condo tower
The demolition of modernist low-income housing in Phnom Penh, built during Cambodia’s artistic and cultural ‘Golden Age’ 50 years ago, exposes the pitfalls of progress
Once filled with music, cooking smells, chatter, laughter and children playing, the hallways of Phnom Penh’s iconic White Building are now being torn apart by bulldozers. One of the last examples of the modernist style epitomised by the bold New Khmer Architecture school in the 1960s, the White Building is making way for an upscale, 21-storey condominium block that will tower over homes and shops in the heart of the Cambodian capital.
Many of the former residents, such as 62-year-old Chhey Sophoan, did not want to leave the crumbling structure. The retired teacher was among the first wave of people who moved back into the building after the Khmer Rouge – which decimated the country during its nearly four-year reign – fell to Vietnamese-led forces, in 1979. And he was one of the last residents to leave, bunking down in his nephew’s poky flat even after his wife had moved to their modern, newly built home on the outskirts of the city.
“It’s hard to describe my feelings about moving out,” says Chhey Sophoan, speaking on the decrepit stairwell near his old apartment in mid-June. “I feel sad, because we made many friendships here.”
The demolition of the White Building – at various times a melting pot of civil servants, artists, families and drug users – marks a major step in the steady gentrification of central Phnom Penh. The sanitisation of the city centre, still ramshackle and rubbish-strewn in parts, will undoubtedly take time to complete, but it is well under way.