Urban-Architectural Forms of Historic Southeast Asia

Historic littoral cities and sites of Southeast Asia that grew along the coast, seascapes, and the confluence of rivers as evolvements from Indigenous settlements linked the dynamism of trade and confluence of cultures, have defied categorization and characterization. For the first time, Jahn Kassim and Ibrahim characterize a series of sites whose historic urban-architectural core forms reflect a graded spectrum following past models of Indigenous urbanism and architecture.

Departing from past thematic discussions on historic eco-urbanism, the book present approximately 20 cities, centers and/or subregions that represent these themes and their recurring features, historically and formally condensed based on morphological, urban-architectural, and iconographical patterns and features. The underlying narrative is that despite apparent diversity and disorder, broad patterns characterize these littoral formations and inflections, and by utilizing morphology as a tool, these highly dense, yet cool, green, and bioclimatic urban patterns of the past can contribute toward the reframing of a localized, nuanced, and Indigenous dimension to sustainability in the planning, architectural, and visual expression of the region. The book departs from 16th century onward, moving through their era of colonial syncretism, and extending to their external grafting and then reverting to pre-classical earlier seeds of cities, where sustainability and identity is rooted to its earliest and most fundamental patterns of climate and culture.

A book that will appeal to scholars, academics, students, and practitioners of architecture, Southeast Asia, cultural and urban geography, design, visual arts, and urbanism fields.