Southeast Asian Houses

Book excerpt: The modernization of traditional houses in each country may be understood as a process by which various aspects of culture and architecture originating from China, India, European colonial countries and international style were assimilated into various forms and elements of traditional houses. In contemporary houses recently developed in Southeast Asian cities, influences of more nearby regions such as South Korea, Hong Kong and Singapore can easily be found. Even under such multi-cultural influences, Southeast Asian countries sought compromises and maintained each country’s unique housing culture, resulting in the differentiation of each country’s housing style. This book aims to find out the uniqueness of each Southeast Asian country’s modern housing through the understanding of the modern housing typologies of each county produced by the process of modernization. Previous studies of Southeast Asia’s urban housing were mostly on political, institutional and economic issues, which can be said to be macro-issues. However, this book focuses on the forms of urban housing, which is rather a micro-issue, compared to previous studies.