Abstract
Genealogy of Bassac presents a careful architectural study of an area in downtown Phnom Penh constructed on twenty-four hectares of landfill along the swampy floodplain of the Bassac River from the perspectives of artists and residents who have lived through five decades of genocide, exile, return, and eviction. It highlights a new creative generation in Phnom Penh whose emergence is a counter narrative to the current “casino urbanism” of the Cambodian regime. The genealogical methodology looks both at area's descent starting from the 1960s master plan by architect Vann Molyvann in order to provide affordable high-density housing adapted to Cambodian lifestyle and a new cultural center, and its creative emergence during an era of speculative development. The book untangles Phnom Penh’s complex history of urban ruptures as inheritor of the Khmer Empire, the satellite of French colonial Indochina, the site of early cosmopolitan independent experiments in architecture and urban planning, the hastily occupied informal settlement after the collapse of the Khmer Rouge, and the forced displacement of the urban poor with the rise of a neoliberal economy.