Bok House: Refusing to see

Seeing is never even, never universal. You see only as much as what's in your head. Five experts looking at the same seashell will appreciate it differently. Ultimately, seeing requires light.

Here's Dimwit Version 2.0
“It's just a house belonging to a well-to-do man in town having some ornamental set up in the facade as well as on the outside.”

Rais, Rais...

The Bok House was commissioned by rags-to-riches tycoon and philanthropist Chua Cheng Bok; that it is a rich man's house is no doubt true. As for its lack of aesthetic value, and historical significance, as poohed-poohed by Rais, I'll contend that the man and his ministry are legitimately blind.

In April this year, the Badan Warisan Malaysia had presented its points when nominating the Bok House to be gazetted as a national heritage. The text can be downloaded here. Among the merits, it describes the significance of the house in merging neo-classical design with tropical strategies such verandahs and the “selang” in traditional Malay houses. Clearly, it wasn't enough.

The point was wholly missed. See, Rais revealed that the ministry had already decided not to gazette the building in September last year, even before it was nominated, even before the Heritage Act was gazetted on Dec 31, 2005. "Because it did not deem it fit to do so. It's just another building," he said when asked why this was never revealed earlier.

With such prejudice, did the Bok House even stand a chance?

Beneath the layer of a mere “ornamental facade”, the Bok House helped capture a slice of our nation's history during a period of dizzying changes in this land, either from a cultural, socio-economic, and interestingly, technological point of view.


Here's one: The Bok House had a concrete structural frame with brick infill. And judging from pictures of the demolition, it also had reinforced concrete floors. Just like your house and mine. Just like Rais' house, I'm sure. Common enough? Yes, and that's what's truly amazing.

It may well be that the Bok House was one of the first houses in the country to be constructed this way – the reinforced concrete frame – giving rise to the most predominant building method today. Heritage enough?

The Bok House began construction in 1926 and was completed in 1929. Ferroconcrete in this region was very much in its infancy at that time, and likely was applied mainly in institutional buildings under the British administrators. Most buildings then had floors which were constructed of a timber joist system. These floor loads would be anchored to hefty brick loadbearing walls as support. Drop by any shophouse or house built in that period up to 40s and you'll see this fact.

Even globally, ferroconcrete is a relatively new technology, much newer than iron and steel. First attributed to Joseph-Louis Lambot in 1848, it took 45 years before the first ferroconcrete building was constructed in the US (1893). As a growing material science, it became the hot topic of discussion among European architectural critics, scholars and practitioners – maintain the tenets of neoclassical design or break free with avant-gardism? Sigfried Gideon expounded on its potential in his polemical Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferroconcrete. These new technologies gave birth to Modernism.

That the Bok House employed a reinforced concrete structural frame showed a daringness on the client-architect relationship to move forward with the times. It echoed the daringness of the tropical-classical hybrid.

It does make sense. Chua was rich. He engaged the services of one of the region's finest architects – the Singapore-based Swan and McLaren – who had worked on the Raffles Hotel, the Sultan Mosque in Kampung Glam, and the Kuching General Post Office among many others. As a practice, its contribution to the ouevre of the Straits architectural legacy and its myriad styles is immense.

Among its key principals was RAJ Bidwell, who while under the PWD was co-architect of the Secretariat Building (now the Sultan Abdul Samad Building) completed in 1897. It isn't established if Chua knew Bidwell. What's clear is that the firm of Swan and McLaren would have been in touch with the most current building methods, and a progressive client with money to spend would have been drawn to the merits of concrete. A good marriage, you may say.

The success of this early case would have no doubt furthered the application of this structural system in other houses and buildings.

Ken Yeang observes in his book, Architecture in Malaysia:
“By the 1930s a new breed of architects arrived in the Straits Settlements with a different approach learnt in England and Europe. These architects clearly departed from the classical tradition and experimented with the new technology and the aesthetics of Modern architecture. Flat roofs were introduced in accord with the dictates of the Modern Movement. The reinforced concrete frame with brick infill and hollow block floors were introduced and superfluous ornamentation was completely abandoned. Visual interest was created by the unconventional positioning of balconies, sunshading overhangs and staircases.”

The Bok House stood right at the precipice of one of the milestones in Malaysian architecture, the bifurcation of the Modern Movement from the neoclassical. It bore the birthmarks of both cultures, one waxing, the other waning. It carried the genetic material of a tropical architectural expression still recessive in the colonial glamour then. It looked West and East and Inside to a glocal answer.

These are the countless stories – myth, patterns, values – which if only there was light, one would surely see. A light the Minister of Heritage regrettably failed to turn on.

Real order

This is Chefchaouen. It's a little town nestled in the Rif mountains off the Straits of Gibraltar in Morocco. It's a traveller's haven - its meandering, pulsating spaces are lessons in texture and light. There is fine grain and an incredible organic order.

Under the great visionary laws of Selangor and KL, this would be bad. This would have to be demolished.

Chaouen started off as a refugee camp back in the 15th century. Muslims retreating from the Christian reconquest of Andalusia in Spain sought shelter in these hills. They brought with them their memory of Islamic Spain and imaged it in stone, the most readily available material there. Jews also joined the settlement, as did fleeing Andalusians giving rise to different quarters within the medina.

Today, this is one helluva slum. This is heritage.

This is Greenwich Village in Manhattan, New York.

If you're old enough, you would remember extensive scenes of it in the movie When Harry Met Sally. To say the least, Greenwich Village is the bohemian soul of Manhattan. Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Andy Warhol, the Beat poets... they were here.

If the Napoleons of Selangor and KL today were administering New York in the 1800s, we wouldn't know of this today.

Greenwich Village was borne out of marshland. Early Dutch settlers farmed there till, in 1664, when the English annexed New Amsterdam and made it part of the larger New York. Even so, it remained a hamlet largely neglected by the other larger and faster growing burroughs. It was, in our own colloquial tongue, a kampung.

Greenwich Village is an oddity on the island. See, in 1811, Manhattan went through radical restructuring – a formal grid pattern was superimposed over the island under the Commissioner's Plan complete with a huge central park. But they left Greenwich Village alone. Even if on the drawing board, it didn't look pretty to the eye, they let it be. They allowed its narrow streets (some curved) and buildings to mature and take its course. They had faith in its people.

Suffice to say, the same wisdom that realised the creation of Central Park also foresaw the eventual charm that Greenwich Village and its mews today would hold.

Even as the pressures of real estate clamour lasciviously for demolition and subsequent erection of higher-rise buildings in space-hungry New York, Greenwich Village snubs them all.

Would our educated city planners have that wisdom? that heart? that steely resolve?

The wonderful Jane Jacobs once said:

There is a quality even meaner than outright ugliness or disorder, and this meaner quality is the dishonest mask of pretended order, achieved by ignoring or suppressing the real order that is struggling to exist and to be served.

Jacobs, who died in April this year, authored The Life and Death of Great American Cities. Her book ought to be required reading for all architects, planners and developers – why, anyone who cares a damn about the cities we live in.

For the city is our mirror. And what do we see in us?

Almost a month ago, MPAJ demolished the entire village of Kampung Berembang. At least 50 families lost their homes and their societal bearings.

Earlier this month, DBKL demolished Kampung Chubadak in Sentul.

The official reason was tagged stubbornly to the Klang Valley's Zero Squatter policy. If only they swore such allegiance to the Rukunegara.

On Saturday night, I returned from a trip to Singapore to learn that the uber-mansion Bok House was being demolished. This despite relentless efforts by Badan Warisan Malaysia to get it registered as a heritage building.

The official reason: It's under private ownership, and the Ministry of Kitsch and Pop can't do squat about it. Said its Minister Rais Yatim: “The Government cannot take over all buildings considered by many as having heritage value due to the high cost of rehabilitation and conservation.”

You know, idiocy cannot be masked. Neither can greed. You can smell it from the breath that passes by their fat tonsils, you can peel it from between the lines of the mainstream media.

What differentiates a squatter from a genuine settlement? Land titles that were promised but never delivered? Could Kampung Berembang have become an urban oasis in the years to come? If inclusive rules were formed and upheld, why hell yes. Can Kampung Baru, Kampung Semarak and Kampung Loke Yew? Yes, yes, and yes.

Could the Bok House have been saved? You bet a datuk's ass it could.

But, but, but... in the media, the govt seems to imply that it has to acquire the property. Nope. That's what those idiots want you to believe. Scrutinise the following.

The freshly-minted National Heritage Act states:

Care of Heritage Site - Section 38.

(1)Where a heritage site is situated on an alienated land, the Commissioner may after consultation with the State Authority —

(a) make arrangements with the owner or occupier for the inspection, maintenance, conservation and preservation of the heritage site;

(b) purchase or lease the heritage site;

(c) acquire the heritage site in accordance with the provisions of any written law relating to the acquisition of land for a public purpose; or

(d) remove the whole or any part of a building or monument on the heritage site.

The govt only has to register – not own – any particular heritage site. The site can easily remain in private ownership with a viable business. Take the Heeran St Museum in Melaka. Or the Station Hotel in KL Railway Station. They're not on the heritage register, but they could easily be listed. It's about teamwork; it's about faith.

And especially so in the emerging cities of metropolitan Kuala Lumpur, Johor Baru, Melaka, and Penang, where the dangling ringgit constantly twists the meanings of squatter, heritage and desirability, it is about taking out the hoodlums in govt and taking back the 'hood.

It's time we restored some sense of real order.

Photo credits:

Chaouen: stuBCN75

Greenwich Village: Amazing Jane

Kampung Berembang: obwique , www.jelas.info

Bok House ruins: Badan Warisan Malaysia