Revisiting the Merdeka Monuments
Speaker: Dr Lai Chee Kien (Adjunct Associate Professor, Singapore University of Technology and Design)
Date and Time: 2.45pm-4.30pm, 25 August 2017 (Friday)
Venue: Malaysian Chinese Research Center, 6th Floor, Research Management & Innovation Complex (RMIC Building), University of Malaya(GPS coordinate: https://goo.gl/map
Abstract
When Independence was proclaimed in 1957, a number of monuments were constructed by the government to herald the new nation, and to embody various aspirations for the new citizen. This included a Parliament House, a National Mosque and an Olympic-sized stadium (Merdeka Stadium) where colonial transfer was formally made. These were later joined by several other buildings to transform Kuala Lumpur, alongside infrastructural development and rapid urbanization, into a capital city during the first decade. Taken as a group, this presentation examines the impact of cosmopolitan imaginations and networks in the transformation of Kuala Lumpur, and reads their realized forms as interactions against the Cold War, as well as with concentric imaginations of the Southeast Asian region and the world at large.
About the Speaker:
Dr Lai Chee Kien is Adjunct Associate Professor at the Architecture and Sustainable Design Pillar, Singapore University of Technology and Design. He is a registered architect, and graduated from the National University of Singapore with an M Arch. by research [1996], and then a PhD in History of Architecture & Urban Design from the University of California, Berkeley [2005]. He researches on histories of art, architecture, settlements, urbanism and landscapes in Southeast Asia. His publications include A Brief History of Malayan Art (1999), Building Merdeka: Independence Architecture in Kuala Lumpur, 1957-1966 (2007) and Cords to Histories (2013), and Recollections of Life in an Accidental Nation: Alfred Wong (2016). He also collaborated on Building Memories: People, Independence, Architecture (2016), a tome about the four national period buildings in Singapore, as well as two graphic novels Last Train from Tanjong Pagar (2014) and The Garden of Foolish Indulgences (2016) based on his academic essays. His 2015 work, Through the Lens of Lee Kip Lin: Photographs of Singapore 1965-1995 won Singapore Book Award for Best Non-Fiction Title in 2016.
Last updated: 10 August 2017
