River Landmark

The Kingdom of Cambodia was once known as the Great Khmer Empire and now bordered by Thailand, Lao and Vietnam. Its current geographic location is the result of many era and periods of happiness, power, hardship and war. Cambodia is now a developing country, begins to flourish over time and blossoming to become the Pearl of Asia it once was. What makes Cambodia unique from its neighboring countries are its culture, its natural landscape, its people value in humanity and last but not least its largest fresh water lake in Southeast Asia, Tonle Sap Lake is a geographic depression which expands and contracts like the heart of Cambodia into the Tonle Sap River and the Mekong River that flows like the blood stream across the Tibetan Plateau, China’s Yunnan province, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam. Due to these unique characteristics of both the Mekong and the Tonle Sap River, our concept design is exploring life like the flow of water, up and down.In order to remind that we are Khmer, we believe that it is not the cloth we are wearing or other accessories that we cover ourselves with, we are Khmer because of something inside all of us, it is our soul and we are unique. The river is the heart and soul of Cambodia, its formation and transformation is by the condition of its nature similar to the way we are born, we are born here so we are Khmer.The river is the source of our culture, our people’s daily activities and our history. The conceptual diagrams tell the story of the transformation of the curved wave into an architectural interpretation which forms the shape of the building. Thus the architecture becomes part of this unique nature that make Cambodia it is today. If the river creates landforms, architects create landmarks, drawing inspiration from its flow, its people, its culture and its history. In this case, designing a landmark building does not mean that the building is always the landmark; somehow, building is a transportation that carrying the landmark and the river itself is the landmark of the country.