Written by Zikry Nasrullah, August 2025
Introduction
What might a stack of binders, carefully filed with clippings of architects, artists and engineers, reveal about architectural practice in Malaya during the 1950s? For the architect Raymond Honey, these binders were a slow, deliberate way of assembling records stretched across centuries and disciplines, on topics and ideas he was passionate about as an architect. Ultimately, these binders represent more than just personal memorabilia; they exemplify the slow, analogue process of accumulating architectural knowledge – an alternative to today’s rapid, algorithmic methods of learning.
As an architecture student in Singapore, why study an expatriate in Malaya like Raymond Honey? Well, our architectural history and lineage extend beyond our nation’s 60-year history, into a pre-independence period shaped by foreign governance and cross-cultural exchange. This trajectory becomes central to a question that remains unresolved today: What is Singaporean architecture? The binder then also bears testimony to how issues that linger today, such as the integration of diverse cultures and ideas, were already pondered upon in the 1950s.
The Expatriate Architect in Malaya
Born in Hastings, New Zealand, Raymond Honey (1925-2012) was educated at Auckland University as a recipient of the Senior Scholarship at that time. He served in three stints in the Public Works Department (PWD) Malaya. In his first role at Kuala Lumpur, Honey designed the Kuala Lumpur Technical College in Gurney Road in 1952, housing quarters for the Rural and Industrial Development Authority (RIDA) and led expansion works for the police headquarters during the Malayan Emergency.1
In his second posting, as the State Architect of Johore, he oversaw the design of the Masjid Bandar Mersing, Dewan Jubilee Intan (Figure 1) and the Customs Building next to the Causeway (Figure 2), for which he was conferred the Pingat Sultan Ibrahim medal. Honey then served as the Superintending Architect of the Architectural Design Office during his third stint in PWD Malaya before he left in 1962. During this stint, he designed the Faculty of Agriculture block for the University of Malaya in 1960 and represented PWD Malaya in an interagency team for the Second Five-Year Development Plan.
Figure 1. Dewan Jubilee Intan, Johor Bahru (Source: The Merdeka Interviews by Ang Chee Cheong and Lai Chee Kien, 2018).
Figure 2. Customs Building next to the Causeway (Source: The Merdeka Interviews by Ang Chee Cheong and Lai Chee Kien, 2018).
Negotiating Modernism and a National Malayan Identity
Honey actively voiced concern for an architecture rooted in Malaya’s climatic and cultural conditions, rather than an uninventive adoption of Western styles. In his 1960 article, An Architecture for Malaya, published in Peta Vol. 3, No. 2 by the Journal of the Federation of Malaya Society of Architects, he urged younger architects to design in response to local conditions, instead of just “follow[ing] western standards and styles very slavishly” (Ang & Lai, 2018, p.455). The article, along with two others, formed the basis for a discussion titled “What is Malayan Architecture” with other pioneer Malayan architects, including Hisham Albakri and Kington Loo. Frank Sullivan, the Press Secretary to the first Malaysian Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman, and a pioneer in the Malaysian art movement, envisioned the following:
“a more congenial mixing of the races … where all the races would be mixing harmoniously, and which would result in a new kind of life and perhaps [a] new kind of architecture” (Ang & Lai in The Merdeka Interviews, 2018, p.457)
However, the assimilation and reduction of various cultures into elements of architecture was not as simple as it appeared to be. One of the buildings that Honey designed, the Dewan Jubilee Intan (Figure 2), combined Chinese ceramic grilles salvaged from old shophouses for ventilation, precast concrete work representing local craft with a Muslim type pattern, a wide cantilevered sloping roof typical of the Saracenic style and the traditional wood carving on the balustrades – all within a Modernist frame (Ang & Lai, 2018). There was no exterior glazing; deep roof overhangs protected the interior from strong sunlight and the exterior from algae staining. Despite the praise it received during the discussion, Honey openly acknowledged the difficulty of creating a national architecture as an expatriate, sharing that one is unable to “produce a Malaysian architecture unless you were a member of the society”, likening some attempts to caricature (Ang & Lai, 2018, p.459).
As an expatriate, Honey was deeply aware of the challenges in his pursuit of a truly “Malayan” architecture, often warning against the uncritical adoption of Western standards. His designs, such as the Dewan Jubilee Intan, reveal a conscious attempt to integrate local craft, climatic responsiveness and modernist formal language – an approach that required not only technical skill but an expansive intellectual repertoire. And the curated binders were part of developing that repertoire. They served not as passive scrapbooks but a database that connected Honey to architectural discourse in Europe and the United States, enabling him to localise global ideas.
The binders were eventually entrusted to Dr. Lai Chee Kien, co-author of The Merdeka Interviews, before being generously donated to the Information Resource Centre at the NUS Department of Architecture and are currently maintained by the archival team. The Merdeka Interviews compiles a series of conversations with architects, engineers and artists who were instrumental in shaping the architectural landscape during the period surrounding Malaya’s independence. Originally conceived as part of Dr. Lai’s doctoral research, the book includes figures such as Raymond Honey and others whose recollections provide valuable first-hand insights into the era’s design philosophies and challenges faced – key details that supplement the binders, allowing for a richer interpretation of the archival material.
Curated Binders as Analogue Databases
Honey’s reading culture and binder-making reflect a particular method of knowledge acquisition. The binders – spanning topics like Biography, Detailing and Modern Architecture (Figure 3) – contained clippings from The Architects’ Journal, The Architectural Review and Progressive Architecture, all of which he subscribed to (Ang & Lai, 2018, p.464). In a 2003 interview, he recalled the expatriates’ fascination with the Festival of Britain in 1951 and its permanent and temporary Modernist structures. Honey himself did not visit England until 1954, so these publications were his window into contemporary trends, particularly those with “outrageous” colour photography, which he said gave him “a much brighter outlook” on new styles (Ang & Lai, 2018). His selection process mirrored his design philosophy: just as he urged younger architects to respond to climate and context, his archive distilled figures and precedents that resonated with him.
Figure 3. The binders Raymond Honey assembled (Source: Author).
What the ‘Biography’ Binder Reveals
The question “Who is your favourite architect?” is a shorthand for revealing one’s architectural interests; whose works do we follow and study with precision? Why are we inspired by them? Likewise, the Biographybinder reveals Honey’s intellectual affinities. Given the limited literature about Honey today, analysing it allows us to trace patterns in his interest and to theorise why certain figures and philosophies earned a place in his archive. Ultimately, they provide us with deeper insights into the mind of one of the pioneering architects of Malaya. The Biography binder, in effect, reveals Honey’s inspirations ranging across disciplines: architects, artists and engineers; bridging historic and modern figures; and spotlighting those who adapted global ideas locally, thereby mirroring his own pursuit of a contextual Malayan modernism.
Biography: Interdisciplinary Study of Artists, Engineers and Architects
Honey’s selections went well beyond architects, revealing a belief that architectural thinking is shaped by a network of adjacent disciplines. Alongside renowned architects, the Biography binder features artists such as Paul Klee (Figure 4), who shared how “the childishness of my drawing must have originated in those linear compositions” in describing City in Sunlight, 1927 (Melville, n.d). Another artist featured is Etienne-Louis Boullee (Figure 5), whose visionary and radical drawings in the 18th century, such as the Cenotaph for Newton, framed him as a philosopher of architecture. Their inclusion suggests Honey valued how fine art could sharpen an architect’s eye for proportion, rhythm and spatial abstraction.
Figure 4: Paul Klee’s Architectural Mirages by Robert Melville.
Figure 5. Boullée, Architect‑Philosopher: 1728-1799 by Helen Rosenau, The Architectural Review, June 1952.
Figure 6. Brunel and Paddington by Henry-Russell Hitchcock, The Architectural Review, June 1951.
Engineers like Isambard Kingdom Brunel (Figure 6)and Thomas Telford appear alongside these artists, indicating Honey’s recognition that engineering ingenuity underpins architectural possibility. The article on Brunel frames train stations as “cathedrals of the nineteenth century” – monumental public works born of technical ambition (Hitchcock, 1951). This mirrors Honey’s own civic-scale projects in Malaya, where engineering considerations were inseparable from architectural expression.
Critics and historians, including Lewis Mumford and Sigfried Giedion, are also prominent. Mumford’s urban critiques and Giedion’s sweeping histories contextualise architecture as a cultural and societal force, rather than a purely aesthetic pursuit. Similarly, clippings of political figures such as Prince Albert (Figure 7), the architect of the Great Exhibition of 1851, present him as a figure who believes in “harnessing science and art” to discover the “laws by which God governs the world” (Fulford & Richards, n.d). This pursuit was also discussed in the article, which influenced the Great Festival of Britain in 1951, an architectural festival that Honey was personally fascinated by (Ang & Lai, 2018). All in all, this eclecticism of sources reveals how Honey saw architectural knowledge as inherently cross-disciplinary.
Figure 7. The Prince Consort: Victorian Philosopher by Roger Fulford and J.M. Richards.
Biography: Integrating Modernist Principles with Historical Precedents
The binder bridges early modernists during the early 20th century, namely Walter Gropius, Alvar Aalto and Frank Lloyd Wright, with early-modern and revivalist figures such as Sir Christopher Wren, Pugin and Vanbrugh during the 17th century. The earliest historical figure found in this binder is the Italian architect and urban planner, Domenico Fontana (1543-1607), chief architect to Pope Sixtus V, credited with the planning of Rome (Figure 8),where he described the Pope’s need to design Rome such that “one can … start from whatever place in Rome … and continue virtually in a straight line to the most famous places of devotion [churches]” (Giedion, 1952).
These historical figures are often presented through biographical retrospectives focusing on landmark projects and civic buildings, echoing Honey’s own involvement in institutional and urban-scale projects such as the KL Technical College and the Second Five-Year Development Plan, which aimed to enhance the economic and social conditions of the rural population by investing in land development and infrastructure (PMO Malaysia, n.d).
Figure 8. Sixtus V and the Planning of Baroque Rome by Sigfried Giedion, The Architectural Review, April 1952.
The broad collection and understanding of architectural history is akin to how Honey’s method of appreciating modernist ideas relied on historic anchoring – situating contemporary movements within a longer lineage of architectural thought and craft, rather than treating them as isolated revolutions. Yet in architecture schools today, how often do precedent studies extend to before the 20th century? How often do we limit ourselves to modernist architects without examining the earlier movements that shaped their principles? Honey’s archive predates four additional centuries, uncovering design philosophies from as early as the 16th century and extending his repertoire to notable figures in related disciplines, as discussed in the previous section.
This expansive timeline also made it possible to map mentorship and influence networks as a means of understanding architectural evolution – tracing how styles emerged through shared schools of thought, common educational institutions, apprenticeships under the same mentors or regional exchanges across disciplines. Perhaps because the British presence in Malaya shaped his professional milieu, or because Honey, never having visited England before 1954, sought to keep pace with its historical and contemporary trends, especially after the Festival of Britain in 1951, mappings of his influences revealed a particular concentration of English professionals (Figure 9) in his binders (Ang & Lai, 2018).
Figure 9. Mapping of nationalities of figures in each entry found in Honey’s Biography binder (detail of network graph; see supplementary material).
Biography: Sensitivity to Cultural Context and Materiality
The relationship between architecture and national identity is a common theme of discussion by Honey and other Malayan architects at that time, and likewise, this search is also prevalent in the curated binders. Gerald Templer, the High Commissioner of Malaya at that time, felt that architects “ought to aim to do that [a national style]”, inspired by India’s post-independence architectural direction towards nationalistic and distinct forms (Ang & Lai, 2018, p.455). Similarly, Giedion’s article in The Architectural Review revealed Alvar Aalto’s successful localisation of modernist ideas in the specific Finnish cultural context (Figure 10). Aalto’s Sunila, an industrial factory with living quarters, integrates the complex with the massive granite rocks found at its original site. He was also recognised in the article for his works that balance modernist ideas with wood, a commonly found material in Finland.
Figure 10. Alvar Aalto by Sigfried Giedion, The Architectural Review, February 1950.
These design philosophies were similarly adopted by Honey in his work as he attempted to integrate Western styles into the Southeast Asian contexts. Apart from the Dewan Jubilee Intan mentioned in the previous section, Honey’s Faculty of Agriculture block (Figure 11) also featured this integration of modern principles with local materials. To adapt to the sunlight angle in Malaya, Honey had several “square panels that were projected and worked fairly carefully to shade the walls” (Ang & Lai, 2018). Moreover, timber slats and louvres were utilised as an ode to the local materials available.
Figure 11. Design of the Faculty of Agriculture Block by Raymond Honey.
Honey’s passion for material technology also surfaces in this binder. His involvement with the Forest Department of the Forest Research Institute Malaysia (FRIM) included work on prefabricated timber panels with “clever geometry for different sorts of gables and hipped roofs” (Ang & Lai, 2018, p.449). This interest parallels articles in his binders advocating for material experimentation and technological innovation, such as in The Doctrine of Auguste Perret (Figure 12), as well as other separate binders titled “Techniques” and “Skills”.
In this article, Collins described Perret’s innovative use of reinforced concrete in Paris as a frame, which would then be used in the construction of domestic architecture by prefabricating the different parts. Perret’s “insistence on its external expression” and “his assertion that structure gives character to a building” were first met with hostile reaction, although it became widely accepted over time (Collins, 1950). Similarly, such a prefabrication technique was also adopted by Honey in the expansion works for the police headquarters, where the use of prefabricated steel structures created a “sensible type of building” (Ang & Lai, 2018). However, just like Perret, who pioneered the use of reinforced concrete, Honey would eventually lead innovative ways in building construction and integration of different cultures into ‘Malayan’ architecture.
Figure 12. The Doctrine of Auguste Perret by Peter Collins, The Architectural Review, February 1950.
From Physical Archives to Digital Platforms
Honey’s curated binders demonstrate a truth that remains relevant: knowledge acquisition in architecture cannot end upon graduation. In the field where architectural trends are constantly evolving, the ability to learn from diverse contexts and the work of others is essential. Honey’s process was deliberate: first, selecting figures whose careers and philosophies could meaningfully inform his own – often architects who engaged in the synthesis of styles, cultural hybridity or social purpose. He then juxtaposed, for example, an article on Pugin alongside one on Gropius, enabling him to cross-reference historic traditions with modern industrial methods. These physical clippings captured a specific moment in the architectural discourse of the 1940s – 1950s, creating a tangible and tactile database.
This analogue method sharply contrasts today’s algorithm-driven digital feeds, where selection is often ceded to the platform. Websites and social media platforms such as Dezeen, Instagram and Pinterest promote content that is already attracting high engagement, while less-interacted material receives less visibility – creating a homogenised exposure to architecture. Honey’s approach, by contrast, was slow, intentional and cumulative; allowing patterns and lineages to emerge over years rather than hours.
Lessons for Intentional Learning in the Digital Age
How, then, do architects today pursue their own architectural development after graduation? In many countries, including Singapore, the renewal of an architectural license requires participation in lectures, workshops and seminars – often through the accrual of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) points, as regulated by the Singapore Institute of Architects (SIA). Oftentimes, these workshops merely inform architects of the latest building regulations and, in some cases, projects by emerging architects. While this system allows for a certain baseline to be measured and achieved for professional learning, can the mandatory accumulation truly reflect the same depth of curiosity and commitment once seen in pioneering architects of Malaya? The kind that drove Honey to inform himself on the latest architectural trends, not just by subscribing to several international publications, but to actively curate his own binders of ideas and philosophies that resonated with him.
In a world where information is both abundant and instantly accessible, Honey’s example demonstrates that knowledge acquisition is not a passive act of consumption but an intentional process of curation. His binders stand not only as a historical record, but as a model for purposeful learning. In the age of infinite scrolling, these binders remind us that the depth of our architectural understanding is not defined by how much we can access, but by the body of knowledge that we choose to preserve, revisit and develop over time.
A portrait of Raymond Honey (Source: The Merdeka Interviews by Ang Chee Cheong and Lai Chee Kien, 2018).
Notes
1. The Malayan Emergency (1948-1960) was a counterinsurgency conflict between Commonwealth forces against the Malayan Communist Party’s armed wing, Malayan National Liberal Army (MNLA); combining military action and resetlement policies for rural Chinese populations (such as the Briggs Plan) to sever insurgent support.
References
Collins, P. (1950, February). The Doctrine of Auguste Perret . The Architectural Review.
Fulford, R., & Richards, J. M. (n.d.). The Prince Consort.
Giedion, S. (1950, February). Alvar Aalto. The Architectural Review.
Giedion, S. (1952, April). Sixtus V and the Planning of Baroque Rome. The Architectural Review.
Hitchcock, H.-R. (1951, April). Brunel and Paddington. The Architectural Review.
Lai, C. K., & Ang, C. C. (2018). The Merdeka Interviews: Architects, Engineers and Artists of Malaysia’s Independence. Pertubuhan Akitek Malaysia.
Melville, R. (n.d.). Paul Klee’s Architectural Mirages .
PMO Malaysia. (n.d.). Second Malaysia Plan. Prime Minister’s Office of Malaysia. https://www.pmo.gov.my/dokumenattached/RMK/RMK2.pdf
Supplementary material
Network Graph of each entry found in the “Biography” binder, produced with Gephi; Note: Person (purple) also denotes an entry in the binder for this binder.
Hovering over ‘Lewis Mumford’ to reveal connections with other nodes; a connection to another person denotes a mentorship/collaborative partnership.
Hovering over ‘Apprenticeship’ (Self-taught) to reveal how apprenticeships was a common method of education despite their nationalities; Cursor hovering over ‘Apprenticeship (Self-taught)’.
How teaching at the same school (Harvard GSD) could have developed similar design philosophies and ideas despite their nationalities and previous education ; Cursor hovering over ‘Harvard GSD’.
Edited by Saptarshi Sanyal