A Study on the Formation and Urban Dwellings of Chinese Town in Malaysia

말레이시아 화인거리의 형성과정과 도시주거에 관한 연구 -말레이시아 말라카와 싱가포르를 중심으로-

The formation of Chinese Town in Malacca of Malaysia and Singapore would explain that Chinese gradually played an important role of commerce and urban service according to the Western European advance to southeast Asia and the construction of colonial cities from the 16th century to 19th and massed residence in many cites of southeast Asia. Chinese was usually separated from the Western European by western colonial policy and city planning. Common architectural characteristics in Chinese towns of Malaysia can refer to the transmission of the Chinese architectural material, the combination of dwelling and commerce in a house and the space organization centered on a court or an air well in the narrow and long site, lying adjacent to street etc. The Chinese dwellings in Malaysia rooted with Chinese settlement in southeast Asia. The Chinese dwellings was not always a shop on 1th floor and a dwelling on 2nd floor before the 19th century. But as Chinese immigration and commercial activity progressed in earnest in the early of 19th century, the row house of Chinese for dwelling was autonomously changed to two functional shophouse for dwelling and commerce. Chinese row house can refer to the use of Malay regional material, change of symmetrical Chinese traditional housing type by the narrow and long site and the tendency of the eclectic elevation of Western and China. Another architectural characteristics of the shophouse is an appearance of the continuous verandah with a cover regulated by Stamford Raffles in Singapore. This regulation was applied to architecture in Chinese Town as Stamford Raffles constructed Singapore. It was spread to South China reversely and became the regulation of streetscape for the modern city. Shophouse of Chinese towns in Southeast Asia and south China can be understood by context of Chinese immigration, colonialism, housing type of commerce and dwelling and the Western European city planning.