Architecture | MNopedia

How Architecture Has Shaped the State

Three Thousand Years of Building in Minnesota

Expert Essay: Architectural historian Larry Millett, author of Lost Twin Cities and numerous other books, offers a colorful tour of notable Minnesota buildings and building styles, from American Indian burial mounds to Beaux Arts monuments and suburban big boxes.

Venerable Vicheth Chum and Yav Socchea

Venerable Vicheth Chum (left) with Yav Socchea, the architect Watt Munisotaram, inside the temple with one of Socchea's designs on April 7, 2017. Photo by Will Yetvin.

Yanat Chhith

Yanat Chhith, the vice president of Watt Munisotaram, outside the temple on July 9, 2017.

Watt Munisotaram

Watt Munisotaram—the only Cambodian Buddhist temple in Minnesota and the largest in the US—sits on a forty-acre rural site about thirty minutes south of St. Paul. Although its founding organization, the Minnesota Cambodian Buddhist Society, was established in 1982, it was not until 2007 that members consecrated a temple on forty acres of their own land.

Red Building

The Red Building at Watt Munisotaram. Originally used as the temple's social hall, in 2017 it reopened as a community center. Photo by Colin MacArthur, March 18, 2012.

Aerial view of Watt Munisotaram campus

An aerial view of the Watt Munisotaram campus taken on March 15, 2015.

Housing for monks at Watt Munisotaram

Watt Munisotaram's original temple building and housing, used after construction of the larger temple (2007) primarily as housing for monks living on the site full time. Photo by Will Yetvin, April 17, 2016.