Dr. Lai Chee Kien is a registered architect and professor in Singapore. He is the author of The Merdeka Interviews, Building Merdeka: Independence Architecture in Kuala Lumpur and etc. Among ten buildings that represented the spirit of the birth of a nation circa 1957, some of them are still being used today, while some have been demolished. In order to record the iconic buildings of this period, he has worked diligently to visit artists, engineers and architects abroad who participated in the
construction project back then. Through their recollection, he figured out how the architects, under limited resources, carried the expectations of the founding father, Tunku Abdul Rahman, towards the construction of the national identity. With the combination of avant-garde creativity and local elements, the unseen deeds of the country’s founding philosophy were then constructed.
