The Star newspaper – Opinion Section - Restore the old buildings

ORIGINAL VERSION

Malaysia is a nice place to be in because she is bestowed with many grand buildings; both old and new ones.

However, when we browse through most of the Malaysian travel brochures, the focus will only be on modern, state of the art buildings and some cultural events.

This brings into mind the state of grand buildings scattered around inner sanctum of Penang Island.

We can see nice architectures built on an entirely different era and thus, it exudes an aura not present on most of the modern structures.

However, most of these old buildings are now under-utilised and left in state of disrepair.
Our government should take cue from countries, which promotes both the old and the new architectures alike.

For example, at Yokohama Prefecture, Japan, they have the Akarenga Sōko and at Otaru, Hokkaidō, Japan, they have the Nishin Goten along the canal waterway.

These buildings are restored, refurbished and converted to serve a totally different purpose than it was originally built for.

As such, there should be more concerted effort to spice up the buildings along the Penang jetty terminal instead of leaving them as it is.

CIPLAK,Georgetown.

Sent on: 11 Dec 2009