Knai Bang Chatt in Kep: The Story of Three Villas Saved from Oblivion

By the sea, three old villas built for a governor, a relative of the king and a senior customs official tell, between them, the whole fate of Kep: colonial splendour, the war that swallowed everything, then a patient rebirth carried by lovers of Khmer heritage. This is the story of Knai Bang Chatt.

One of the property's emblematic villas, set amid lush tropical landscaping of palm trees and manicured lawn

Picture Kep in the 1960s: a seaside town built for the elite, where senior officials and relatives of the royal family had modernist villas built facing the sea. It was in this setting that what would, decades later, become Knai Bang Chatt was born.

Three Villas for Three Prominent Families

Between 1962 and 1965, three villas rose on this stretch of coastline, designed by young architects trained under Vann Molyvann, the father of modern Khmer architecture and himself a student of Le Corbusier in Paris. Each belonged to a different owner: the Blue Villa went to the governor of Kep, the Grey Villa to a relative of King Norodom Sihanouk, and the Red Villa to the province's head of customs. Their clean lines, terraces open to the sea and geometric volumes illustrate what would later be called New Khmer Architecture, championed with fervour by Prince Sihanouk over the two decades following independence.

War, Abandonment, Silence

The turn of the 1970s brought this golden age to a brutal end. Like the rest of Kep, the three villas were abandoned, looted and left to the vegetation and the elements for nearly thirty years. The architectural style that had given rise to them vanished along with them: its leading figures went into exile or were silenced, and the whole town sank into oblivion, becoming a ghost town of gutted villas.

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