"Today, it's not the state who owns the old properties, but the ruling party, the CPP": Vann Molyvann

Independence Monument; Vann Molyvann, architect (All photos: Luke Duggleby for The Wall Street Journal)

A lone figure walks the stands of Vann Molyvann's Olympic Stadium.

The Chaktomuk Conference Hall, one of Mr. Molyvann's earliest designs, was built in 1961.

The library at the Institute for Foreign Languages, now part of the Royal University of Phnom Penh

More of Mr. Molyvann's work at the Institute for Foreign Languages

Yet more of the institute

Modern Masterpieces
MAY 28, 2010
By TOM VATER
The Wall Street Journal

Vann Molyvann, Cambodia's greatest living architect, recalls that the night his Olympic Stadium in Phnom Penh was completed, in 1964, "I took my wife to see the work." Sitting in the top tier of the stands, they listened to Dvorák's "New World Symphony" over the stadium's speaker system. "It was one of the great moments of my life."

In the years after Cambodia won independence from France in 1953, Mr. Molyvann—then scarcely in his 30s—set out under the tutelage of King Norodom Sihanouk to transform Phnom Penh from a colonial backwater into a modern city. But in the late 1960s the country was drawn into decades of war and terror, including years under the murderous Khmer Rouge regime, and Mr. Molyvann's vision was virtually forgotten. The architect himself had to flee the country.

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