Vann Molyvann studied architecture in Paris on a state scholarship through the 1950s, training partly under Le Corbusier, before returning to newly independent Cambodia in 1956 and becoming Norodom Sihanouk's de facto state architect. Over the following fourteen years he built more than one hundred structures — the Independence Monument, the National Sports Complex, Chaktomuk Conference Hall, university buildings and the White Building housing estate — in a manner scholars later named New Khmer Architecture: modern reinforced-concrete construction carrying forms translated whole from Angkorian temples and adapted to Cambodia's monsoon climate. The 1970 coup and the Khmer Rouge years sent him into exile in Switzerland; he returned in 1991 to lead the Angkor conservation authority until 2001, and received the Nikkei Asia Prize in 2013.
