Students from UNSW Arts, Design & Architecture and three Cambodian universities worked with the residents of Phnom Penh’s Chen Dam Daek neighbourhood to build an understanding of community-centred design.
A UNSW educational partnership has developed a street mural with a Cambodian urban community to promote an engaging environment for local children.
This vibrant mural in Chen Dam Daek is the culmination of ten years of collaboration between artist, curator and educator Mr Vuth Lyno, Ms Eva Lloyd, an architect and educator from UNSW’s School of Built Environment, and three universities in Phnom Penh.
UNSW and Cambodian students come together to study everyday life in the streets of the capital city then design interventions based on the concerns and desires of local residents.
Co-created in 2023 by local artist Leav Kimchhort, students and residents and children in the neighbourhood, this mural is intended to transform a busy alley into a place of play and learning for young people whilst promoting a positive neighbourhood image.
“The mural tells unique stories of the history, cultural practices and character of Chen Dam Daek and incorporates interactive learning components for children,” Ms Lloyd says.
Chen Dam Daek is one of the oldest neighbourhoods in Phnom Penh, dating back to at least the 15th century; it has evolved through multiple social and political regimes. It exemplifies dense, adaptable and convivial urban living, resisting the kind of globalised, top-down development that visibly surrounds it.
“Its history is one of resilience and it provides a valuable case study for resident-led city making,” Mr Vuth says.
The neighbourhood holds notable architectural and cultural heritage as the home of one of the oldest Buddhist pagodas in Phnom Penh that sits alongside a Catholic church and a Chinese temple constructed during the French Protectorate period (1863-1953).
After the fall of the Khmer Rouge, residents returning to the city occupied the Catholic church and Chinese temple. They shaped a network of self-constructed homes in these buildings and surrounding interstitial spaces, now housing 1700 residents.
“Some speak of the sacred protection they feel living within the triangle of three religious buildings,” Ms Lloyd says.
Ms Lloyd’s work foregrounds and advocates for built environment education that centres on social justice, situated learning and knowledge building through lived experience. In Phnom Penh, she practiced and taught as an architect, collaborating with local and international NGO’s on improving tenure security with urban poor residents, designing affordable housing and community facilities, and facilitating participatory workshops with neighbourhood groups.
During the eleven years since her return, she has gone back to Cambodia every year, working closely with individuals and organisations in Phnom Penh on community-centred built environment projects that she and Mr Vuth now collaborate on through education, practice and research.
In 2015, Ms Lloyd and her studio partner Giacomo Butte formed a partnership with the Dean of Architecture and Urbanism, Mr Kong Kosal, at the Royal University of Fine Arts (RUFA), to develop the Street Life Studies program.
Now in its tenth iteration and having hosted more than 350 students, the course helps UNSW and RUFA students learn from the ways that residents shape their lives on the streets of Sydney and Phnom Penh.
In 2019, the course grew into an opportunity for deepening learning through an annual, term-long community-design placement hosted by Street Life Studies guests Vuth Lyno from Sa Sa Art Projects and Pen Sereypagna from the Vann Molyvann Project, which is open to students from all six Phnom Penh architecture schools.
This was supported by Ms Lloyd’s Interior Architecture program director, Professor Lisa Zamberlan (UNSW Pro Vice-Chancellor International), who advocated for experiences that support learning in Global South contexts, and BE Lecturer, Ms Iva Durakovic, who developed the Professional Placement course to facilitate these opportunities.
The UNSW Street Life Studies course has hosted more than 350 students in ten years. Photo: kimkao_foto.
In 2022, UNSW Built Environment scholar Dr Jayde Roberts (now at the National University of Singapore) invited Ms Lloyd and Mr Vuth to join the Southeast Asia Neighbourhoods Network (SEANNET). SEANNET seeks to understand how everyday residents govern, manage and intervene in their immediate urban landscape to achieve a degree of autonomy, and how this phenomenon might inform city-making at larger scales.
Ms Lloyd and Mr Vuth now co-lead the SEANNET Phnom Penh case study with mentorship from Dr Roberts, and have built a community-based education-research-creative practice model with Chen Dam Daek residents at the centre, supported by Street Life Studies alumni, Hun Sokagna and Tia Vannvera, and social scientist, Dr Try Thuon.
Over the past two years, the Street Life Studies and Community Design Placement programs have worked in partnership with Chen Dam Daek residents, supported by Phnom Penh Capital Hall and SEANNET. Prior to this project, Hun Sokagna had already built relationships with residents through ten years of informal interactions while working as a guide for Khmer Architecture Tours.
With this relational foundation, Ms Lloyd and Mr Vuth have been working to recognise, research and enhance the everyday design intelligence of residents and discern avenues for connecting these practices with broader city-making policies.
The program is funded by the Australian Government New Colombo Plan, Stiftung Furstkucher Kommerzienrat Guido Feger, Action Change, Henry Luce Foundation and UNSW.
The two-week Street Life Studies course explicitly brings together UNSW and Cambodian students to expose them to different ways of being and learning, to support each other in their learning, and to sow the seed for future collaboration.
Students explore streets as urban rooms which residents shape and adapt to form their social and spatial lives amidst the rapidly urbanising context of Phnom Penh. Immersing themselves in streets and alleys, they observe and document the dynamics of everyday life whilst eating snacks from the local store, helping an aunty with chores, and co-mapping perceptions with interested passersby.
One UNSW student said: “[Our] RUFA partner students provided so much insight into the customs and traditions of their culture as well as daily routines. [Without them] I would have missed this or not understood fully the situations.”
Similarly, Cambodian students have opportunities to re-see their own city through translating their language and culture for UNSW students. The peer-to-peer learning in the course provides the platform for UNSW and Cambodian students to examine their preconceptions about the nature of streets in their cities, and the roles of designers and community members in shaping them.
The team-based, cross-cultural learning that occurs is an essential pedagogical component of the course, which supports a deeper understanding of the local urban context.
“This approach helps us avoid quick and often inaccurate assumptions about problems or vulnerabilities that lead to misaligned solutions, the tendency towards universalised technical approaches, and a perpetuation of the parachute in and out approach,” Ms Lloyd says.
The foundation built through Street Life Studies enabled the annual Community Design Placement. Part of this foundation was individual relationships with residents, educators, alumni and students across Phnom Penh. The other part was institutional relationships between UNSW and RUFA, and more recently with the Chen Dam Daek neighbourhood, Phnom Penh Capital Hall and SEANNET.
Design concepts from Street Life Studies seeded the idea of a street playground in Chen Dam Daek, which was investigated through participatory research in the SEANNET project, laying the groundwork for the Community Design Placement to support its development and implementation.
In 2023, students from UNSW and three Phnom Penh universities participated in the Community Design Placement, working with residents to realise the street mural.
The placement program builds skills in participatory design, Ms Lloyd says. “Students learn about their role as facilitators rather than creators.”
They experience what design with not for can mean. Students take part in neighbourhood activities, such as cooking events, Khmer games like champa champbai (a blind-folded guessing game), and nail-painting with local aunties.
“They focus on building, not only the design project, but also understanding and relationships, recognising community strengths and ensuring work is locally rooted,” said Mr Vuth.
For example, Cambodian student Priik Souernsaksith forged a close relationship with artist Pou (uncle) Chhort, explaining: “We want him to do what he wants as an artist … because it is his community ... we don’t want him to follow our rules.”
Through this process, Pou Chhort, who had survived the Khmer Rouge and studied art at RUFA, took a leading role in the mural. He is keen to see young people involved in creative activities in the neighbourhood and works with young apprentices in his practice.
UNSW Interior Architecture student Dehan Silva, in his post-placement reflection said: “I go back to what I learnt over four years and this experience has definitely spun it around … I questioned the agency of design and the ownership or the owners of a society … We are designers of narratives, designers of debates, not just end products.”
Mr Vuth says: “We try to pay attention to more immediate goals as seen in the street mural project and also potential longer-term agency that could be fostered through the co-creation process. We see this in residents like Pou Chhort.
“This is the true meaning of Sahakum (community), which is walking alongside one another, this is what the project is all about.”
The potential for this mode of relational education practice in universities is significant as it offers space for both transformative student learning and the sustained community collaboration required for change to occur.
Mr Vuth, Ms Lloyd and Dr Roberts all commented: “This way of working often sits at the periphery of curriculum but should be front and centre if we are to equip students for the kind of complex, interdisciplinary and intercultural challenges they will face as graduates.
“This practice requires remaining in a state of flow and recognising that ‘impact’ can be measured in how well we support the right relationships not only the resultant outcomes.”
School of Built Environment
Ms Eva Lloyd
Pillar 8: Enable healthy lives
