View from Phnom Penh: the formerly elegant Cambodian capital was one of the many victims of the country's civil wars. It is now at peace, and attention can finally turn to restoring its rich architectural heritage.

In April 1967, Lee Kwan Yew was invited to Phnom Penh by Cambodia's Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Cruising along the capital's elegant boulevards in his Mercedes convertible, the Singaporean premier turned to his host and mused, 'I hope, one day, my city will look like this'. Eight years after Lee's visit, Phnom Penh lay charred and abandoned. Khmer Rouge soldiers had dynamited the National Bank and cathedral. The Art Deco Bibliotheque became a makeshift kitchen for Chinese advisers to Pol Pot staying at a decrepit Hotel Le Royal next door. Books were used as firewood. Pigs and chickens roamed its corridors.

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Today Cambodia is finally at peace and Phnom Penh is undergoing a remarkable transformation. Roads are being re-paved, colonial villas repainted and fountains turned back on after 28 years. And, while belated, the rich architectural legacy that survived the wars is beginning to attract the attention it deserves, as well as considerable concern.

At the heart of the tourist agenda is the Royal Palace and the great National Museum next door, which houses the best collection of antiquity from Angkor's temples outside the Musee Guimet in Paris. George Groslier's 1920 masterpiece of Khmer-French architecture boasts a vast angled terracotta-coloured roof supported by massive teak beams. Lovers of Art Deco can admire Hotel Le Royal, the nerve centre of war correspondents pre-Pol Pot, since lavishly restored by the Raffles hotel chain. The city's cathedral is lost for ever, but along the same quiet tree-lined street where it once stood are numerous handsome colonial edifices all hardly changed in 50 years, along with the railway station, the ochre bank and post office, not to mention the archives and a reinvigorated Bibliotheque (sans cochons).

For me, however, Phnom Penh's real architectural legacy is not colonial but Modernist, fusing postwar French trends (and a celebratory use of concrete) with the indigenous motifs of Angkorian antiquity. Called 'New Khmer Architecture', the unique hybrid flourished over the decade and a half following the end of French rule in 1953, but ended abruptly with the coup that deposed Sihanouk in 1970 and led ultimately to 30 years of civil war.

The architect responsible for the majority of these structures is 78-year-old Vann Molyvann. The first of his countrymen to be trained in Europe, at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris, he came directly under the influence of Le Corbusier. Vann Molyvann used the Modulor in Phnom Penh during the 1960s, enlisting the services of engineer Vladimir Bodiansky and the town planner Henning, both of whom provided technical assistance to the UN during the period. But the essence of his style comes, he insists, from Angkor Wat and Khmer antiquity, his own architectural heritage.

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He was to Sihanouk as Christopher Wren was to Charles II or Shusiev to Stalin. The prince and his leading architect planned well over 100 projects as part of an ambitious urban renewal programme aimed at dragging Cambodia out of the political backwater, while simultaneously proclaiming the country's newfound self-confidence and sovereignty. Examples are liberally scattered around Phnom Penh. However, the most obvious symbol of this new national identity is the Independence Monument that stands defiantly on Norodom Boulevard, the broad thoroughfare that joins the old colonial section to the modern zone developed during the '60s. Directly emulating the Arc de Triomphe, the chocolate-hued structure is, appropriately enough, surrounded by a profusion of nagas, the mythical protective snakes and kbach, or Khmer ornaments.

On the same street, set back from the road in formal gardens, is a compound of cool, low-slung concrete and brick pavilions with quirky zigzag roof lines, elevated Angkor Wat walkways and rhythmical symmetrical doorways suggestive of Ta Phrom and Preah Khan temples. Created as a state palace, the complex functions today as the Senate and is accessible to the public when the government is not in session. Similarly elegant is the riverside Bassac Theatre, a brown brick and concrete structure, with a foyer designed as a series of large triangles suspended above shallow pools of water and cantilevered staircases. Diamond patterned red, black and white tiles add splashes of colour, while louvred ventilation provides light and air. Sadly, the auditorium was gutted by fire in 1994, forcing performers to move downstream to the Chaktomuk Theatre at the point where the Mekong, Tonle and Bassac rivers converge. Conceived in 1961 as a Buddhist conference hall, the fan-shaped building deploys, once again, triangles and zigzags as unifying motifs.

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The 80 000-seat National Sports Complex, which opened concurrently with Kenzo Tange's more famous stadium in Tokyo in 1966, is perhaps the strongest statement about friendship between nations and hosted the Asian Games of the same year. Besides the four vast concrete towers, the stadium has a stunning cantilevered roof and large ornamental pools that directly imitate the barays, or traditional reservoirs of Angkor Wat. More allusions to Khmer antiquity can be found at the School of Foreign Languages on Pochentong Boulevard, where another naga-protected walkway leads the visitors over barays of water. To one side is a tiny circular library of ribbed concrete.

Vann Molyvann recently became the subject of a major study, Building Cambodia: New Khmer Architecture 1953-1970, by ARK (Architectural Research Khmer), a group comprising architect Hok Sokol, art historian Darryl Collins and the architect-urbanist Helen Grant Ross. Due to be published this year, one of its aims is the creation of an inventory of all Cambodian architecture from the period. Vann Molyvann, Collins asserts, was not alone but merely the greatest and most prolific of a group of architects working in his employ, most of whom died during the civil wars. A good example is perhaps the Chenla, Lu Ban Hap's eccentric, abstract theatre where Sihanouk hosted his so-called international film festivals.

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But ARK has major concerns, the main one being that Cambodian architectural students have little knowledge of the creative flowering following independence. (Ironically, when so much of modern Cambodian identity is subsumed by the overwhelming power of Angkor and the Angkorian empire on the national psyche.) As a result, neglect, botched restorations and inadvertent destruction are still serious threats to the survival of twentieth-century buildings. Many renovations are neither up to standard nor conducted transparently. The Bassac Theatre remains in a state of suspended animation, while officials at the Ministry of Culture fight over the money needed to restore it. The Chenla has been annexed by an ugly, circular restaurant. The restoration of the Sports Complex was handed over to a Taiwanese company so that the perimeter could be developed with commercial outlets. Results were poor and served only to suffocate this once imposingly voluminous space. More responsive and imaginative approaches are greatly needed, so that this distinctive period of Indo-Chinese Modernism can be truly appreciated once more.

Photographs: Susan Schulman