Penang Architecture

Art deco hotel along the market.

Part of the charm of Penang is its architecture. The urban core of Georgetown preserves many more traditional Straits shophouses than can be seen in Singapore. Penang escaped World War II with much less destruction. Today the city is a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Courtyard of a Chinese temple in Penang, looking towards the street.

The urban fabric also includes a number of Chinese and Buddhist  temples. We made sure to wander by a few of those on our long Saturday afternoon walk in the broiling sun. Here is a selection of some of the city's architectural gems. There are plenty of pictures after the jump break.

Penang Market

The shophouses along the market streets of Georgetown, Pulau Pinang.

The Passengers have just returned from a weekend in Penang. We spent two days exploring with friends the multicultural Malaysian trading island in the Andaman Sea. The place has been a stopover point for traders from Southeast Asia, India, and China for many years, and it all combines into a potent mix.

Local coffeeshops sell food during the Saturday morning market.

For a bit of local flavor we spent Friday night sampling the hawker stalls along Gurney Drive. On Saturday morning we joined a batch of our traveling companions on a wander through the morning market in Georgetown, the island's main city. Here's a few photos from the day. We started at 8:00 AM, before the sun became nearly unbearable in the afternoon.

 Credit Passenger H with many of these photos. I was too busy looking at the Straits architecture. I'll try to do a separate post on that later in the week. There are more photos after the jump break. Click the link below left to see more of market life.

Putting the "Real" in Real Estate

Update (9 July 2009): The Times Magazine has removed this slide show from its website because several photos in the series were "digitally altered" and "did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show." These alterations were not disclosed by the artist, and alert viewers (hat tip: Simon Owens) produced evidence of computer manipulation, such as the composition of a timber-framed interior created by photographing half the scene and completing the tableau with a mirror image of the initial photo.

A seven-bedroom "stockbroker Georgian" house in Greenwich, CT, now in repossession. Image by Edgar Martins for the New York Times Magazine.

Last night the Passengers explored the streets of Singapore’s Chinatown and sampled some excellent street vendors’ food. Among the topics of conversation was the incredible downturn in real estate prices across the developed world. Even Singapore has been hit as asking prices for high-end apartments in our building are rumored to be down 50% or more. Most Singaporeans remain stunned by the incredibly perverse lending undertaken by American consumers at the height of the bubble. Retail banking here seems quite staid by American and British norms. Try finding a savings account in Singapore that pays more than one percent APY.

On this topic I want to call attention to a photo essay commissioned by the New York Times Magazine last week. Portuguese photographer Edgar Martins thoughtfully captured the overreach in real estate in the United States. With emphatic verticals and deep fields of vision his images show aspirational follies in the household, holiday, and commercial markets. The depopulation and abandonment on display reveal the hubris behind each project. Leaves blow through an unsecured living room. Timber frames wait for dry wall, and a solitary box mysteriously blocks up the only opening in a concrete edifice. Martins describes his visualizations attempts “to portray the inherent movement in stillness. Sometimes objects become almost like events.” Here the viewer has been inserted in the uncertain moment after building has stopped but before new action has begun.

Downtown condos in Phoenix, AZ, stand unfinanced and unfinished. Image by Edgar Martins for the New York Times Magazine.

These photos do ask the viewers to roll up their sleeves and avert failure. The slideshow title “Ruins of the Second Gilded Age” leaves little doubt that an unfavorable judgment has been passed against American indulgence, and the images feature almost no tools that suggest a means to finish the work. Building materials appear on a street of downtown condos, but no forklifts are available to move them. Trash litters a driveway in Georgia without a dumpster to clear it. Furthermore, the artist and/or editors have chosen to visit unsympathetic locations, including those hyped by the artist’s patron. Building for a wealth population in Greenwich, CT, also allowed for spectacular losses on speculative homes. Las Vegas seemingly drew upon an inexhaustible pool of perceived wealth until homeowners balked at the high price demanded by Sin City. Martins' series once again points up the ability of images to make tragically real the stories told by journalists and economic data.

An unfinished model home in a Chandler, AZ, subdivision appears as an abandoned cathedral through Edgar Martins' lens.