Lecture: Singapore Shophouse and Hong Kong Tong Lau with Dr. Lee Ho Yin

Lecture Synopsis:

Both the Singapore Shophouse and Hong Kong Tong Lau are products of people brought together in the wake of the fall of one mighty empire and the rise of another – China and Britain – in the 19th century. These two architectural typologies stemmed from a common origin: the Southern Chinese shop-dwelling, an urban mixed-use (residential and commercial) building type common in the coastal cities of Southern China. The evolutionary path from the Southern Chinese prototype to the respective regional variations is a story of how people from China and Britain adapted to the land they had emigrated to and settled in. Through a slide presentation, our guest speaker will show how these architectural hybrids bejewelled the twin cities.

The Speaker:

Dr. Lee Ho Yin ( 李浩然 ) teaches final year undergraduates and PhD students, and is one of the founding staff as well as the Current Program Director of the Architectural Conservation Program in the Department of Architecture at the University of Hong Kong. He is an architect with extensive experience in design, project management and heritage conservation. His numerous academic publications include topics on the socio-cultural aspects of Hong Kong's built-environment and the vernacular architecture of Southeast Asia, some of which were published by the Oxford University Press.