Water and Architecture-Cambodia

Water and Architecture – Cambodia 
By: Brad Hoepfner

With my continued research on floods, floating things, and the history of water and its relationship to architecture I stumbled upon homes built upon stilts. This has been a very common solution to the problem of water, rise above it and stay dry.

In Cambodia lies a small fishing village known as Kampong Phluk. This community has to deal with the extreme when it comes to wet and dry seasons. During the wet season, the village seems to rest atop the local river and the houses give an impression that they are floating on the water. Most of these homes are built on top of stilts that range from 6 to 8 meters in height. But during the dry season the lack of water exposes these tall stilts and the buildings are lifted far off the ground. In this time some of the villagers move to temporary homes until the wet season returns.

The village itself was built in Tonle Sap Lake and the Mekong River flows out of the lake. During the wet season the River becomes extremely bloated with snow melt and runoff from the monsoon rains and causes a hydrologic phenomenon which reverses the flow of the river and fills the lake. Tonle Sap Lake becomes one of the largest freshwater lakes in Asia during the wet season.

Water and architecture seem to have always been intertwined throughout history and even now we are seeing the affects of global warming and the rising sea levels. How will we adapt as a species to the very near problems and will we look to our past for solutions?