Lights Out for White Building 

The low-cost housing structure of Phnom Penh, White Building, which was built in 1963, faced its demolition in 2017. The four-storey apartment style building, that was once a pinnacle of modern housing in Cambodia, and was commissioned under the reign of Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk faced its end to pave way for urbanization. As the families pack-up to relocate, residents recount memories of a lifetime. 

 Images shot on assignment for Phnom Penh Post.

Residents of the White Building congregate around a staircase with a mural depicting the building's exterior as the structure that was once the Kingdom's civic pride nears its demolition. More than half of the families living in the soon-to-be-razed structure have now agreed to compensation offers from the Ministry of Land Management, after 71 more families accepted the offer of $1,400 per square metre in May. The enormous complex in the Cambodian capital was built in 1963 as the pinnacle of modern housing, but is now crumbing, rundown and facing demolition.

White Building resident Chhet Saveourn stands with her family as they reflect on the big move. Saveourn’s family is one among 493 who are leaving the building, which is slated to be razed and redeveloped by Japanese firm Arakawa Co. While given the option to leave and come back once the project is finished, almost all the families have chosen to take a buyout and relocate around the city.

With most of the building’s occupants having already moved out, the buzzing housing complex is finally shutting down and will be remembered as a close-knit community - where creatives rub shoulders with families, nuns and business owners - as well as some on the fringes of society.

A cardboard approving a resident's eviction lies on the ground with a lost identity card of its former occupant. Ministry officials swarmed the building during evictions trying to verify residents leaving the building, while second-hand dealers bought up possessions families did not want to take with them.

Japanese firm Arakawa Co is slated to replace the housing complex with a 21-storey building. Twelve of the floors will be put on the open market, while five floors have been retained for families that want to return, though so far no residents have picked that option.

Chhum Srotum, a White Building occupant. has an emotional moment as she refutes the claims to call the civic housing structure, 'dirty'. She says, “We are not dirty. We want to earn a living and afford for our children to study, just like everyone else." Built as an experiment in low-cost social housing for the capital, the White Building has been sitting in the heart of Phnom Penh since the 1960s. Despite, or perhaps because of, its dilapidated appearance, it has developed a reputation as an iconic sight in the city, and is home to businesses and an art gallery as well as hundreds of families.

The apartment complex of 2,500 residents was a self-contained community of apartments, shops, salons, restaurants, and non-governmental organizations, with its own school, art space, and archive.

A portrait of King Norodom Sihanouk - who led the country through independence commissioned a team of architects including Khmer architect Lu Ban Hap and Russian engineer Vladimir Bodiansky to design the White Building - with a new style -New Khmer Architecture. The structure once the Kingdom's civic pride that survived a civil war, a foreign occupation finally loses itself to the merciless drive of redevelopment in modern Phnom Penh.