Lectures in Phnom Phen

On Wednesday 4.1 we gave a guest lecture at Royal University of Fine Arts

Royal University of Fine Arts, RUFA is a university of architecture, archaeology, urbanism and plastic arts. Phnom Penh has a few schools of architecture, whereas RUFA is the only public option. The City in Crisis group collaborated with RUFA on a workshop called “A city for all” in 2010 and 2011. and we wanted to show the Cambodian students the results of the work we had done after returning to Finland.

Our goal was to present the works of the City in Crisis courses in 2010 and 2011 and to open a discussion about the projects with the RUFA students. We also wanted to recruit some students for a workshop we were planning in a urban poor community later the same week.

In the lecture we presented briefly the projects of City in Crisis 2010, and more in detail the projects from 2011. We also showed some Khmer architecture we find inspiring, mostly from Vann Molyvann, perhaps the most important architect for modern Khmer architecture. At the end of the lecture we told about our other plans for the feedback trip and invited students to join the program.

Around 30 students attended the lecture, including the City in Transition course of Aalto University with 10 students and 2 teachers. Some students stayed for a while after the lecture to discuss issues like bamboo treatment, angles on roofs, practicalities of occupying the railway etc. 9 students joined us for Saturdays  workshop and we met them on Thursday to discuss plans for the work shop.

The same evening we gave a public lecture at Meta House:

META HOUSE: German Cambodian Cultural Center is a forum for Cambodian culture which supports Cambodian artists and promotes the development of contemporary art in Cambodia through local and international exhibitions, workshops, community-based projects etc. by fostering links with South East Asian and international universities, galleries, curators, non-governmental and governmental organizations. META HOUSE is established as a forum and meeting place for artists, including architects. They have lectures, presentations and film screenings weekly.

We contacted the META HOUSE just before they finished their program late December, and they managed to squeeze us in while we were here. We wanted to show our ideas to the interested public to get feedback, and also to expand our network to see if any of the ideas could be developed further.

The presentation of the projects was basically the same as the lecture at RUFA earlier the same day. We had also invited represents of Komitu Architects, a group of former students of the City in Crisis course, to present their Youth Center project that is about to be realized in Kouk Khleang community.

About 30 expatiates and locals joined us for this presentation. In general the feedback was that they appreciated the presentation, and found it important to discuss these subjects in Phnom Phen in different forums. After the presentation we had some small discussions with different people, one of which was the curator for this years Cambodian festival of architecture, who wanted to publish some of our work in the festival.

A big thank you goes to RUFA and Meta House for offering us space and equipment for giving the lectures. We are also grateful to Pagna Serey for translating at the RUFA lecture.