The Penang House: Rise of the Malaysian Architect 1887–2017

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Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1. The Straits Settlements were a collection of small, but strategically located, directly ruled British colonies including Penang, (occupied 1786), Malacca, (occupied 1785 and taken over from the Dutch in 1824), and Singapore, (occupied in 1819): D. G. E. Hall, A History of South-East Asia, 4th ed. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1981), 543–8.

2. Jon S. H. Lim, “Colonial Architecture and Architects of George Town and Singapore, 1786–1941,” (PhD, National University of Singapore, 1991).

3. These include “The ‘Shophouse Rafflesia:’ An Outline of Its Malaysian Pedigree and Its Subsequent Diffusion in Asia,” Journal of the Malaysian Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 66: (1) (1993): 19, “Architecture of Southeast Asia,” in Dan Cruickshank, ed. Sir Banister Fletcher’s a History of Architecture (Oxford, Boston: Architectural Press, 1996); Lim, Jon S. H. “Singapore: Chinese (Singapore),” in Paul Oliver, ed Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 1145–6; The Penang House and the Straits Architect 1887–1941 (Penang: Areca Books, 2015) and “The Malaccan Townhouse and Shophouse: An Evolution in the Anglo-Dutch World,” in Yunn Chii Wong and Johannes Widodo eds., Shophouse/Townhouse: Asian Perspectives (Singapore: Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore, 2016).

4. Anoma Pieris, “Review of the Penang House and the Straits Architect 1887–1941,” Fabrications: The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand 28: (2) (2018): 4, 291.

5. As recently as 2017, David Teh, ed. Views Reviews Interviews: Celebrating 60 Years of Malaysian Architcture 1957–2017 (Kuala Lumpur: Pertubuhan Akitek Malaysia, 2017), had the subtitle Celebrating 60 years of Malaysian Architecture 1957–2017, when Malaysia was not formed until 1963.

6. See the top photograph on page 144 of Lim, Penang House and the Straits Architect. I explore the origins and extent of this carpentry tradition in John Ting, “Hand in Hand with Crossed Top Plates: Mapping the Contribution of Chinese Carpenters to the Production and Installation of Melbourne’s Prefabricated ‘Singapore Cottages,’” in Paul Memmott, John Ting, Timothy O’Rourke and Marcel Vellinga, eds., Design and the Vernacular (London: Bloomsbury, 2023).

7. Anthony Reid, Southeast Asia in the Age of Commerce, 1450–1680 Volume One: The Lands Below the Winds (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988).

8. (United Kingdom) Architects (Registration) Act 1931, 3.

9. “History of the AA,” Architectural Association School of Architecture, accessed February 2024, https://www.aaschool.ac.uk/about/history.