The Divided House. Gender-segregated Housing in Cities in Colonial Southeast-Asia
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17169/ogj.2018.5Keywords:
Residential Building, Southeast Asia, Colonial City, Room Arrangement, MalaysiaAbstract
Building plans of the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the British colonial cities of Penang (Malaysia) and Singapore show a gendered structuring of domestic space. The article describes transformation processes of housing in relation to space and urban structures in colonial Southeast Asia that have created a binary setting. Apart from socio-economic processes other aspects of gender relations, family and household structures as well as guiding domestic models of the upper classes have to be considered. These changes of domestic forms and relations are best outlined when focusing on the innercity shophouse. The shophouse developed from a partly commercial house, which was built according to Chinese courtyard houses, to a terrace house in the style of Victorian suburban houses in Great Britain, and eventually became a suburban residential building.References
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