On the Rise, But For How Long?
10 min read
FIRST TIME ARRIVALS to Penang as well as many Penangites are stunned not only by the construction “frenzy” of high rise residential buildings but...
Toya: Stretching Batik to Its Limits
9 min read
A CAUCASIAN who claimed to be an expert asked Toya where the batik painting exhibition was, blithely unaware that he was looking at batik paintings! That was at...
Taking Training Into New Territory
7 min read
The snaking line as participants register for the conference.THE ANNUAL ASTD International Conference is marketed and positioned as the place where s...
Kedah Hoped For The Return of Province Wellesley in 1957
1 min read
How the independent Federation of Malaysia would incorporate its various parts was not a given thing, and the issues up for negotiation in 1956–1957 wer...
Dell Celebrates The Arts
4 min read
FOR DELL MALAYSIA managing director Datuk Simon Wong, corporate social responsibility (CSR) is an important facet of Dell’s corporate culture. Given Del...
Local Democracy Alive and Kicking in Pakatan States
5 min read
IN A PEM column last year, I wrote extensively about local government elections and the laws and policies governing them in Malaysia. At that point, both the st...
What's Your Penang?
2 min read
A LONG TIME AGO, I was standing on a London tube platform watching rats scurry under the rails. Something caught the edge of my eye, a vaguely familiar beach...
What Is The Truth About The Baling Talks?
6 min read
We tend to think of the Baling Talks of 1955 as a serious attempt by the government to negotiate peace with the Communists. But if we were to study the actual transcript of the talks, we might get a different impression.
Learning Heritage From Penang
2 min read
A DELEGATION FROM the Indonesian National Heritage Trust, made up of architects, planners, archaeologists, heritage property owners, government officers, acad...
The Past Is The Present
7 min read
Somehow heritage became an unquestionable value in itself in the everyday life of George Town ever since its UNESCO World Heritage listing, and often there is no further attempt to conceptualise what exactly is “inherited”.
Rivers of Tears
4 min read
George Town’s built heritage is a great example of design moderated by cultural context. We notice this in the city’s morphology, the building typologies lining the streets, and the spaces between the public realm and private sanctuaries.
George Town –Where Design and Culture Must Continue to Merge
10 min read
GEORGE TOWN CANNOT help telling a thousand tales. The “outstanding universal values” that emanate from its foundation of culturally informed design...