Jalan Tun HS Lee : a summary

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Evoking a longing for users to connect with a space, to dwell and linger in it, is a vitality in creating a sense of place, and when architecture gains a sense of place, it gains meaning. Jalan Tun HS Lee seems to do well in this aspect, accentuated with historical landmarks that integrates with the urban fabrics of the site and allows the street to forge an identity for itself. Personally, I see Jalan Tun HS Lee as a street of culture and heritage. I see the street as one that embodies the Chinese spirit, as it exudes chinese culture in many aspects, from the taoist temples and speckling of Buddhist food offering altars to the wide array of Chinese local cuisines along the street. Even the people that dwell along the street, as vendors, temple go-ers, or merely bystanders seem to be those of Chinese descent. Nevertheless, I believe that Jalan Tun HS Lee is more than a part of Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown, but also a collage of past and present. The streetscape of shophouses portraying a mixture of architectural styles sitting alongside mid-rise modernist office blocks can almost be interpreted as a historical timeline, telling us the history of the street not with words, but with visual cues rooted within the architecture. It is these kind of details that set the street apart from others, as it is a direct representation of the historical events that lie behind the street, the battles scars of the street's evolution dressed in charming facades. In light of that, it is of utmost importance to preserve it's distinctiveness from falling prey to insensitive industrialisation. Even now, the desire to modernise is eradicating the authenticity of the street and selling out bona fide culture for modern aesthetics and capitalism. Guandi Temple for example, painted red and ornamented with dragons, has already been stripped of fundamentals of Cantonese architecture, losing identity and authenticity. Thus, careful, correct and sensitive restorations and preservations must be executed in order to prevent our heritage from becoming an indifferent pile of concrete set in a void, a mere object of industrialisation.