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

This is Lim’s second volume on house architecture in Penang, a Malaysian state previously a British Straits Settlements colony.Footnote1 His first was 2015’s The Penang House and the Straits Architect 1887–1941. Lim’s aim through the two volumes is to tell the story of the evolution of Penang architects and their house architecture from 1887 to 2017. Malaysian Architect is the latest publication to build on his 1991 PhD thesis,Footnote2 from which several publications have emerged.Footnote3 These have significantly contributed to Malaysian and Singaporean architectural history, where his considerable empirical PhD data has given depth and scholarship to the emerging knowledge base of the hybrid origins of Southeast Asian architecture. Malaysian Architect is a welcomed scholarly work at a time when journalistic coffee table lifestyle publications are often conflated with architectural research.