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The start of the 20th Century was architecturally quite interesting in these farflung colonies, because in a way, they were sort of out-of-date in comparison to the ‘trendsetters’ of London and Paris, and hence fashionable building styles were one, maybe even two decades behind in terms of taste. Nowhere is this broken-telephone dissemination of architectural ideas most clearly displayed than in the larger private houses of the Straits Settlements. The architecture reflected in these houses is, unique to the region, if not unique to Singapore, and presents a syntax using classical vocabulary not seen in the west (or outside the tropics). While the larger government buildings tend to be in a more-or-less standard colonial classicism, the private dwellings built up to the Second World War exhibit a freedom and exuberance in the use of classical detailing,1 and at the same time, form a new architecture which is distinct unto them; a result of the synthesis of various cultures and influences. While these circumstances gave rise to a unique style of architectural novelty in their structures, the subsequent interiors of the homes of the overseas Chinese bourgeois that were generated provided a stage for the evolution of interior decoration to be displayed.

The interior of these domestic buildings, as domestic interiors are, is articulated through decoration, the literal covering of the inside of an architectural ‘shell’ with the soft ‘stuff’ of furnishing.2 This form that is created on the inside, in some cases is a reflection of the spirit of the buildings that they are in, and in the case of the late 19th Century interior, the Classicalish is also to be seen, as it is on the exterior, and it becomes difficult to describe them without some discourse on style.

The incidence of multiple cultures can be most clearly seen in the interior of Panglima Prang, a former residence in Singapore built in 1860. (Figure 1) The drawing room is, at first glance, entirely Victorian in character, thoroughly filled with objet-d’art, venetian mirrors, and a vast quantity of chairs. The interiors of this house reflect the widespread western influence

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1 2

With reference to the previous essay Rice, C. (2007). The emergence of the interior. London: Routledge. p3

among the upper middle classes of the time3, with increasing numbers of people from better-off families being educated abroad in Britain and elsewhere. On closer inspection, the room is indeed filled with objects of all sorts, but they are not the typical thing one might find in a London sitting room in 1890. Instead, they are of oriental origin. (although there is something to be said of the fascination of chinoiserie to the western mind, which ironically, is re-appropriated by the early 20th century southeast-asian bourgeois.) This incidence of multiple cultures is something which will continue to influence the appearance of interiors for the next hundred-or-so years, which will be explored through the interior spaces of homes in Singapore and its surrounding region.

The earliest interior photographs in the region come from the mid to late 19th century, and depict the houses of the British, and are furnished in the mode of the time: a Victorianish style of chairs scattered around occasional tables laden with objet d’art, removed from the London drawing rooms and placed in the middle of the tropics. (Figure 2) The reference is straightforward (Figure 3), the colonials having brought the concept of the English wholeheartedly to the tropics. The idea of the ‘English Room’ is hard to objectively define, and a definition of this style varies with every attempt at explanation4, but consistently display a distaste for sudden change and upheaval, resulting in blended styles and characteristics of different styles.5 This trait seems to have been shared in Singapore and the region, as one observes the slow progression and change of the rooms from the 19th century to the present.

The first cultural group to adopt western influences into their daily lives were the Straits Chinese, or peranakans, who are a community who, having lived in the Malay archipelago for centuries, adopted various local customs and cultures while maintaining distinct pride in their Chinese ancestry and culture. Eventually with the colonization of the area by the British, and their subsequent transition from an education in Chinese classics, to becoming English-educated, were consequently fiercely loyal to their territories and to the British colonial

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3 4 5

Lee, Kip Lin, and Gretchen Liu. The Singapore House, 1819-1942. 1988. Print. p.157 Moore, D. and Pick, M. (1985). london: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson limited, p.10. ibid, p9

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government,6 eventually coming to be known as ‘King’s Chinese’.7 This cultural group, while comparatively small, was wealthy and hence the homes they built account for the more significant dwellings, apart from those built by the Europeans. Their unique heritage and wide range of cultural influences is expressed in their interiors. Their homes of the 19th century are the first to exhibit a departure from traditional styles (for example, the traditional southern Chinese house) as well as from the textbook classicism of the colonial masters. (Figure 4)

This change is exhibited in two stages. The first is manifested in what is the unchanged Chinese shophouse layout, but with the introduction of the prevailing western fashions, of Chippendale, Regency of Queen Anne styles8, while the second, occurring in the early 20th century, eschewed the traditional floor plans for a more European layout, with Chinese mother-of-pearl inlaid chairs next to a rocaille recliner in teak.

With Panglima Prang, the house exhibits a unique middle ground between two cultures, trying to emulate one without sacrificing the other. Let us now examine a Villa in Penang, Malaysia, built in 1926, for a Mr. Leong Yin Khean. The cosmopolitan Cambridgeeducated owner9 acquired a taste for European architecture during his time abroad. The house is itself of note, with the Boodles’ Club of St. James’s, London serving as its inspiration but also with Italian mosaics and references to a Venetian Palazzo.10 The interior of the house does not survive, as the house is now used as a restaurant, but artist impressions from Maple & Co. of London survive, showing the Edwardian opulence of this once great house. (Figures 5 and 6).

Here the English interior is consumed as fashion, and part of a fashionable life, rather than as the possibility for a new unity of style at the level of national culture11 similar to the relation of the imitation of the English style in Australia a few decades earlier.

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6

Lee, Peter, Jennifer Chen, and Peter Lee. The Straits Chinese House. Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2006. p20 ibid, p21 ibid, p91 9 Wu-Ramsay, Christine. Days Gone By: Growing Up in Penang. Penang: Areca Books, 2007, p57!

10 !Lim, J. (n.d.). The Penang house: Penang: Areca Books, 2015. p159 7 8

11!Rice,

C. (2007). The emergence of the interior. London: Routledge. p85

To an extent, it is a function of personal taste, but just over a decade later, the interiors of this 1937 house12 is in stark contrast to the opulence of Leong’s house eleven years earlier. The furniture was provided by a single manufacturer and possibly specially made for this house by a Singapore firm,13 is described as art-deco14 and the fittings such as the staircase and windows, have a distinctly modern feel to them, in keeping with the rest of the house, which is transitionally modern, but with a provincial European canted half-hip roofs.15 (Figures 7 and 8) Simplified and cheaper interiors in this style would be continued for several decades, with a break of several years due to the outbreak of the second world war, and would lean close to the international style, producing generic interiors. The spirit of earlier houses such as Panglima Prang with their delightful architectural patois would fall out of fashion as international modernism in the domestic sphere would erase cultural influences in the design of the living space. Arguably, both the Leong house and this one do this, despite their different modes.

The houses (of this region) of the 1950s and 60s are not particularly welldocumented and there is not much literature, and consequently information on their interiors is similarly sparse, but let us examine this art deco house built in the 1930s, but subsequently refurnished by a later owner. It is named Chans Ville, after the owner’s last name, and in contrast to the last two examples, was not furnished by any designer or furniture company, rather, entirely by the occupants. (Figure 9) The result is a jumble of antique Chinese furniture, antique westernstyle furniture and modern pieces of no special interest. However ordinary the space of this house may be, it does give a good indication of the feel of the average middle class home (which would be much smaller than this) at the time. The significance is not in the good taste (or lack of) in this house, but the inclusion of a great many Chinese pieces which perhaps belies a reluctance to fully embrace a western home, despite the structure of the house being tropical art deco, which is neither traditional or vernacular. Yet there is a desire for western furniture: a pair of Chesterfield sofas make an appearance beside a Qing dynasty display cabinet.

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12

House at Codrington Avenue, Penang, Malaysia, built for Choong Eng Kim

13!Frankel!Brothers!of!Singapore!

14!Lim, J. (n.d.). The Penang house: Penang: Areca Books, 2015. p116!

15!ibid.!

REDISCOVERY OF ETNICITY/NEW ORIENTALISM

In the 1980s, there was an increasing desire to define a regional identiy,16 and occurred at a time at which globalization and its effects on the asian-ness of cities like Singapore was starting to be felt, especially since the spread of the international style, which was just becoming firmly rooted in the area. Ideas of the “traditional feeling” of the house coupled with the idea of the ‘contemporary vernacular’ resulted in a new ish: the architecture has come full circle from Classicalish, to international-style modernism, back to a vernacularish, which is evident most clearly in the interiors of the houses built from this period onward, especially a the discourse began to be less focused on the idea of identity and regionalism,17 and a distinct architecture which was no longer drawn directly from the vernacular. Dal Co writes ‘Not only is dwelling essentially “finding a homeland”, but the home. As the form of dwelling, is a metaphor for the historpcal-political concept of homeland.’18 While Dal Co writes this in the context of the writings of Herman Hesse, his point can easily be applied to the context of the Singapore house of the early 90s, where there was a concerted effort to display the regionalism in not only the architecture, but the interiors of the homes.

The search for such an identity is manifested in the interiors of the 1990s brought about the re-introduction of the re-ethnicized oriental fetishism, and the era of stuff. In some ways, it was an Asian renaissance of Victorian thinking and tastes in furniture. The height of the British empire brought all sorts of artefacts and a miscellany of oriental objet d’art into the Victorian drawing room with all manner of porcelains and statuettes, continuing the fascination with the East which manifested itself as chinoiserie during the Regency. The middle classes in Singapore likewise (although without intentionally emulating the Victorians, as well as the Chinese middle classes of the 19th Century) by some deeply-ingrained colonialist mindset, similarly filled their homes with regional antiques, giving rise to a particular cosmopolitan setting with a distinctly southeast asian feel. New wealth in the country, coupled with political turmoil in

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16 17 18

The new Singapore house. (2001). Singapore: Select Pub. P23 Ibid p24 Dal Co, F. (1990). Figures of architecture and thought. New York: Rizzoli. p23

some other southeast asian countries resulted also in an influx of Burmese, Cambodian and Indonesian antiques, which were bought by collectors eager to add to their collections, which would be proudly displayed in their homes, creating a unique cultural setting, distinct from the international modern interior.

The Eu House (1993) (Figure 10) by Ernesto Bedmar19 in Singapore encapsulates this vernacularish architecture in the same way the Classicalish in Singapore was codified a century before. A series of pavilions arranged around a courtyard is a clear nod toward the arrangement of a Chinese courtyard house20 while the rest of the house contains influences from a range of other regional influence; Balinese influence is evident, as are the bungalows of India, and also Malay village dwellings21. This is most literally expressed in the choice of furniture and fittings, juxtaposing Chinese carved doors against Balinese sculpture, with a living room full of mis-matched chairs.

In a way, the homes of this decade were a revival of the classicalish of the homes a century earlier, and create a distinctly 1990s asianish architecture. The Lee house (Figure 11) photographed in 1994 is an interesting product of its time.22 On one hand it is a distinctly new house. Its form does not particularly make use of vernacular references, but they are included by the use of traditional building materials such as glazed ceramic ventilation blocks and grilles patterned after Chinese designs. There is a clear nod to the owners’ Chinese ancestry in the architecture, which is further carried in the interior with some Chinese furniture but also a range of items from various southeast asian countries assert the house’s geographical location. This appears to be an effort to synthesize a unique regional architecture that takes into account the climate, culture and setting of the house, which is distinct from the rather more generic ‘modern house’, or even the classicalish houses of the past. While quite a pleasing house, it does end up becoming a collection of cultural references and artefacts which, in the same way Panglima Prang

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19 20 21 22

an Argentinian architect based in Singapore ibid p24 ibid p58 The book unfortunately does not name the architect

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could never be truly classical, achieving a Singaporean house is an impossibility. The layout of the room pictured bears undeniable similarity to that of The Castle (Figure 2) or even Alnwick Castle (Figure 3) with its arrangement of two round tables down the middle of the room, surrounded with miscellaneous seating, and afterwards festooned with floral arrangements, lamps, and objects all around. This is a new ish:the ish of the 20th century is asianish.

The similarities to an English drawing room can either be ascribed to an unwillingness to ‘let go of the past’, (which would be ironic, since the English drawing room is not the past of the Singaporean) or its adoption as a new societal norm. While being far less lavish, this slightly more ‘normal’ living room (Figure 12) shows the same arrangement. With far less cultural objects, the ‘standard’ symmetry of middle class living rooms is observed. Even when re-furnishing an 20th century house, the formal symmetrical layout of furniture is retained, despite the asymmetry of the actual house (Figure 13). This new living room arrangement in the 1913 house23 obeys all the norms of the living room, many still observed, but also with a collection of objects proudly on display. Beyond the obvious argument on choice of style, since the individual styles of each object are clearly not classical, there emerges a Singaporean Room, that which is not defined by whether the furniture is Regency or Louis Phillpe, but of a general feel that characterizes this room, much like the concept of an English Room, which is identifiable as English whether it is Tudor, Georgian or Victorian.

THE DECLINE OF THE SINGAPORE ROOM

On entering the 21st century, one finds that tastes have again changed, and the houses, and subsequently their interiors, are closer in spirit to those of the international modern style than the more-recent 1990s, and one sees the ‘clutter’ of that neo-Victorian renaissance of collecting begin to be cleared away and ‘cleaner’ houses are the fashion. A phrases used to

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23

Architect David McLeod Craik

describe these houses is “cutting-edge tropical architecture in a global city”24, and in Robert Powell’s preface to his 2009 book Singapore Houses, he dwells on the ideas of youth, climate and technology, as opposed to his 2001 book on the same subject, where he writes about vernacular and cultural influences on the shape of the Singapore house. This change of focus is once again most obvious in the owners’ choice furnishing and decoration of the interiors.

In the living room in the Lee house (Figure 11), when compared with a house from the late 2000s (Figure 14), there is a sense of geographical placing, and one is clearly in the Asian tropics. This particular residence in Singapore, however, is a little more ambiguous. It’s general good taste and style aside, it is rather international, and could easily be a Miami hotel, or a London show house. The rise of these houses heralded the end of the discourse on identity and culture, as the globalized norm of standard good taste is wholeheartedly embraced. It is no longer Asianish. It is hotelish and strangely impersonal. The inherited character of the English room has now disappeared, leaving only the layout of the furniture. The inviting warmth of the country manor’s drawing room has disappeared, as has its Singapore counterpart, but it, despite being modern, is formal in the sense of the continental sitting rooms of the 17th century. The ish has not been escaped, but this house brings to mind different points of reference: the impersonal feel of a trendy (as opposed to luxurious) hotel. It is not even tropical, as this house (Figure 14) clearly appears to be, although it is similarly without obvious southeast-asian vernacular and cultural references. There also exist those where the interiors fail to communicate either of these.

In these, the ish is entirely missing (Figures 15, 16) and they are not only unplaceable, but rather uninviting and uninteresting. This then begs the question: does the ish create a successful interior?

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24

Powell, R. and Lim, A. (2009). Singapore houses. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing. p8

THE (IM)POSSIBILITY OF A CLASSICAL INTERIOR

The decline of the formal, symmetrical layout probably began with the introduction of the asymmetrical plan that was popularized by the rise of the cottage orne, or the cottage-like house25, popularized by the emerging trend in Britain. In Singapore and the region however, the Chinese preference for symmetry resulted in its lasting far longer. This survived too in the layout of the furniture, as we see in this plan of the Leong house (Figure 17) with its profusion of couches, chairs and tables, which would give an arrangement not unlike Panglima Prang or Alnwick. Interiors seem to be classified by stylistic differences rather than architectural ones. There is a significant difference between the architectural form of the baroque palace, renaissance villa, and modern plattenbau, but when it comes to the interiors of the buildings, other than layout, they are classified into empire, baroque, Louis XIV, Louis XV and so on. This is a problem when inspecting the interior of the Singapore house, one realizes that the distinctions are no longer as clear as when one is in Europe. Having said that, there arises another problem: while the decoration and ornament has changed, the essential layout of a domestic interior remains quite the same, for the function of the living room, however large or small, has not changed (apart from the hideous introduction of the television into the reception space, but which does not contribute to the social function of a living room). Therefore, the interior of the house is probably the most difficult to define. It is both classicalish, modernish, and in this context, both Asianish and Europeanish. However, it can also be described as classical, since the idea of the Singapore room is descended from the arrangements of the interiors of Classical houses, but here arises another problem: although the house might be ‘classical’, the concept of a truly classical interior becomes impossible to define. The Singapore room is truly ish in every sense.

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25

Lee, Kip Lin, and Gretchen Liu. The Singapore House, 1819-1942. 1988. p.63

THE OVERARCHING ISH

To conclude, the history of the interior in Singapore (and nearby Penang, and other places) seems to have repeated itself, moving from purer style to a delightful Asiaish style.

This occurs at the end of the 19th century, and again a the end of the 20th, nearly a century apart.

Both times marked periods of transition, and are hallmarked by the incidence of multiple cultural influences. In the same way that the architects and builders in the region created a new architecture in their houses of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, their inhabitants also created a new style to rival that of the classic English Room: they created a ‘Singapore Room’. But as the spread of modernism in the 1930s onwards brought an end to this Singapore classicalish, so too has globalization brought an end to the new Singapore Room of the late 20th Century, and the asianish is no longer present, and the Singapore Room is now a thing of the past, to join classicalish in Singapore’s memory of the past.

BIBILIOGRAPHY 1. Lee, Kip Lin, and Gretchen Liu. The Singapore House, 1819-1942. 1988. Print 2. Moore, D. and Pick, M. (1985). london: George Weidenfeld & Nicolson limited 3. Lee, Peter, Jennifer Chen, and Peter Lee. The Straits Chinese House. Singapore: Editions Didier Millet, 2006

4. Wu-Ramsay, Christine. Days Gone By: Growing Up in Penang. Penang: Areca Books, 2007 5. Rice, C. (2007). The emergence of the interior. London: Routledge 6. The new Singapore house. (2001). Singapore: Select Pub 7. Dal Co, F. (1990). Figures of architecture and thought. New York: Rizzoli 8. Powell, R. and Lim, A. (2009). Singapore houses. Tokyo: Tuttle Publishing

I L L U S T R A T I O N S

Figure 1, 1a: The drawing room and main dining room of Panglima Prang. Both are furnished with european-styled furniture, but incorporate traditional Chinese objects, such as the ancestral altar in the dining room, while the drawing room is full of Chinese ceramics beside Venetian mirrors and Victorian chairs.

Figure 2: The Castle, built in 1870, was the residence of an Englishman. This photograph is thought to be taken between 1879 and 1883, and it is rare, for few interior views from the period have survived. The layout of the living room is similar to the layout of the drawing room in Figure 3 (left) which is at Alnwick Castle. Note the two round centre tables and array of chairs in both cases.

Figure 4: The drawing room of the residence of Foo Eang Sean in Penang, Malaysia. c1908. Of note is the juxtaposition of the chaise longue beside a set of Chinese-style mother-of-pearl stools and table.

Figure 5, 6: two watercolours from Maple & Co of London, of the proposed interior furnishings of Leong Yin Khean’s villa in Northam Road, Penang.

Figure 7: Artist impression of the interior of Choong Eng Kim’s house at Codrington Avenue, Penang (1937) designed by Charles Geoffrey Boutcher, a British architect.

Firgure 8, 8a: photographs of the same house, showing the living room and the stair hall. The furniture is thouroughly modern, but the stair balustrade hints at Chinese pattern design, and the owners’ appreciation for the classical is deduced from the miniature of Canova’s Cupid and Psyche at the Louvre.

Figure 9, 9a: Two views of Chans Ville showing the entrance hall and the living room. It is generally an uncoordinated jumble of furniture, in contrast to the meticulously designed interiors of the Leong house and the Cheong house in Penang, that would have been the exceptions in the post-war years.

Figure 10: A view of the internal courtyard of the Eu house Figure 10a: An interior corridor of the same house, showing the clear vernacular references, and the re-use of an antique chinese carved door.

Figure 11: The Lee house, Singapore. A view of the family living room.

Figure 12: Drawing room of a house at Nathan Road by David McLeod Craik (1919), Singapore. This photograph is from 1994. note the similarties in the layout of furniture with figures 3 and 11.

Figure 13: Grange Road House I, Singapore, by SCDA Architects, Singapore. The living room is undoubtedly elegant, but somehow lacks the warmth of the homes of the previous decade.

Figure 14: Outdoor living room of Victoria Park Road House, Singapore

by Ernesto Bedmar. If not for the colour of the wood, and the views of the tropical exterior, this house could be equally cold.

However, both of these could easily be hotels, as marks of inhabitation are not obviosly present.

Figure 15: Jervois Hill house, Singapore, by Lim Cheng Kooi. The rounded furniture looks out of place, and the feel of the social living room is gone from the houses of this period.

Figure 16: This oddly-photographed room looks hardly inviting. the cold plainness of the rom is not offset by any decoration of any sort.

IMAGE CREDITS

Figure 1:

Lee Kip Lin/Keng Ah Wong

Figure 2:

National Museum of Singapore

Figure 3:

Derry Moore

Figure 4:

Lee, P., Chen, J. and Lee, P. (2006). The Straits Chinese house. Singapore: Editions Didier Millet.

Figure 5, 6, 7, 8: Lim, J. (n.d.). The Penang house.

Figure 9, 11, 12: Gerald Lopez Figure 10:

www.bedmarandshi.com

Figure 13:

www.scdaarchitects.com

Figure 14:

Robert Powell

Figure 15, 16:

Albert K S Lim