RUFA-Royal University of Fine Arts

"I heard RUFA's moving" is mostly how most people start their conversation with me lately. Of course I have heard of it, but I have remained silent until now. I know my post has no such power, but I write it for the sake of memory.

As a RUFA student, I highly believe that RUFA’s current architecture should be saved because everything about this school has a huge impact on the person I am today.

Before entering RUFA, I held a thought that RUFA is a dirty public school with low quality. Not more than a week after entering this school, my perspective had changed 180 degree.

I find RUFA the best and most beautiful university you could ever find in Cambodia. To elaborate, you’d think my achievement and ability to create art as today is due to talented professors, seniors and fellow students at RUFA, that is actually true, but not entirely.

RUFA is the oldest art school in Cambodia, and this current campus is about 100 years old, it was first created by King Sisowath as his personal workshop. Every little detail and aspect of RUFA’s campus is a timeless work of art, everything here inspires, if not every student, me to continue to create art. I mostly come here just to sit and absorb the school’s beauty, which many failed to value.

As an art student, or a design student, there are countless times when I felt blocked and demotivated, but being in this environment I regain back my inspiration because how can one not be inspired by such art and beauty?

I am deeply inspired by every little aspect, from the quietness, the statues, the building to how the building’s colours match so well with the window’s, grass and trees.

Most importantly, it changes my view about modern architecture. Of course we don’t have air-conditioned or cleaned modern building, but I would never trade my current school campus for any of those.

I look at RUFA and I see something different, a strange beauty and that is because I don’t feel like I'm in the 21st century, I don’t feel like I'm in this chaotic city of Phnom Penh, I just feel like I have travelled back some decades, and I just feel peaceful.

So in short, it's sad to see that we're moving, and I still think we need to save this campus because it is easy to build the future, but not the past.

And most importantly, save it for the sake of art.