Long before the World War II, Malaya was colonised by the British. Among their colonization, Malaya had undergone major changes in all aspects. Not to say in the world of architecture, the British had brought significant influences to the local architecture style. Different architectural styles such as Neo-Classical, Moghul, Anglo-Indian and Victorian were brought unintentionally to this land.
As an architecture student, we were given a choice to analyse the building selected in around Kuala Lumpur. This project can be broken into two main parts, which is group work and individual work. For our group, we have selected Coliseum Cafe and Hotel, which is located at Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman.
Since this building has no personal website, therefore we are said to have limited source from the internet. Therefore, we decided to go to the building and do our researches on site. We went to Coliseum Cafe twice, which the first time for data collection and the second time photo taking for our report purposes.
PROJECT 1 - ARCHITECTURE HERITAGE BUILDING ANALYSIS
After the first draft on the introduction of the building, we then moved on to the second draft, which we have to include the building analysis into the essay. According to the project brief, we are to analyse the architectural elemtns and special feature of the building. Besides, we have to do comparative study from one of the western building with the same typology. Coliseum Cafe and Hotel, however, is a colonized victorian architecture style. Hence, we choose Strand Hotel in Yangon, Myanmar as Myanmar was also once colonized by the British and we beleieve that they should be having the same architectural elements at the building.
End of this project, i learnt how to identify the architectural style of the building in relation to the developement of Western architecture in our land between the era of Industrial Revolution and post World War II. Besides, I also learnt that various surrounding factors can cause changes to the building, for example, in terms of form and shape. Moreover, I also learnt how to interpret the building based on the photos even though the building itself lack of information from both internet and also static data.
After we finsihed the group report, we are to use the same heritage building in the report and produce an A3 size analysis board. This project requires us to study our assigned building for Western architecture influences. Since there are 4 person in each group, all of us are to further divide ourselves in the selection of the sub-topic for our building analysis, ie. idea & concept, user & context, response and changes. As a result, I was responsible for the changes part after the "lucky draw" conducted by ourselves.
