Pteah Saart – promoting Cambodian traditional wooden houses

As part of DoorToAsia design-in-residency in the area around Sambor Prei Kuk temple in Kampong Thom province, the team of creatives from all over Asia came up with the idea of organizing a house beauty contest that different villages can apply. As a tool to foster local pride in the traditional architecture, it functioned as a discussion starter in terms of what cultural features to preserve (e.g. decorative wooden beams in the roof, old household tools, stone objects on top of the roof) and behaviors to focus on in terms of what constitutes a beautiful home: clean environment, practice gardening, not littering the street in front of the property, etc. An exhibition and conversation was done with the different communities, with the village-chiefs actively promoting good practices from villagers to maintain the significant culture of the place and promote its local tourism. More on the overall design-in-residency program can be read here, and a summary video can be found in the bottom of this page.