New Straits Times, February 12, 2005
by Chris Prasad
Terrace houses have coloured the Malaysian urban landscape for as long as most of us can remember. Over the years, the terrace has grown into one of the more successful residential concepts in the country, and has come to be recognised as the principal form of housing for the middle-income group.
Today, terraces are probably responsible for housing the largest segment of the nation's population, having become an integral feature in any developed or emerging residential locale.
Blossoming as a popular residential concept in the 1970s, the origin of the Malaysian terrace house can be traced to humble beginnings in the post-Independence era of the late 50s and early 60s.
Kuala Lumpur, capital of the young country, was growing rapidly, giving rise to many satellite townships that were primarily industrial districts, around which grew an expanding population of blue collared workers requiring a simple and basic form of housing near their places of work.
According to architect Puvan J.Selvanathan, the concept of linked houses, a successful form of low-cost housing in the United Kingdom, provided the ideal solution as it allowed for large of families to be clustered close to their workplaces by maximizing the land area.
"The growth of corridor in those days was very much the stretch between KL and Port Klang, along Old Klang Road. This stretch spawned many satellite districts.
"A prominent example would, of course, be Petaling Jaya, where in places such as Section One, you still see evidence of some of the earliest forms of this housing type," he said.
According to Puvan, the designs for these houses, primarily suited to temperate conditions, were imported wholesale from England. As a result, some of them had somewhat awkward features for an Asian home, such as chimneys.
"Yes, it really was quite bizarre! But this is just evidence that the concept was a borrowed one as Malaysian architecture hadn't developed an identity of its own in those days," he said.
Though simple in nature and basic in design, Puvan noted that these buildings were solidly built, with sound foundations and brick walls - which is why many of them are still standing today.
Improvements in the design of terraces began taking shape in the 70s, together with home ownership demands from a rapidly growing middle-class urban group.
This was the start of the mass housing effort, and with blue collared workers taking to apartments as a consequence of rising land cost pushing them upwards, a new concept was conceived for terrace housing in communities close to commercial hubs. This appealed to the emerging middle-income population, firmly cementing the terrace house as a "middle-class phenomenon" that brought about thriving new communities.
"During this time the terrace moved up the economic and social scales, evolving into the preferred housing form of the middle-income earners. The Bangsar model, in fact, set the template for terrace housing development in many other States of the country," Puvan said.
Terraces remained popular throughout the 70s and many suburban communities in the Kland Valley, as well as throughout the country, began to use this concept as their primary residential product.
Noticeably, in established communities such as PJ, which began to transform from an industrialized community into a more affluent neighbourhood, developers began to offer more spacious terrace houses in an attempt to lure buyers to the satellite township. Evidently, this strategy worked.
"In my opinion, houses were just better built in those days. There was an unmistakable quality, with good foundation, good structure and decent finishing," said Puvan, adding that common features such as walls with ventilation holes, spacious rooms and living areas proved a lot of thought was put into the design of these early terraces.
Unfortunately by the mid-80s, at the height of the housing boom, the rapid development of houses began to take its toll and quality became the victim of pace.
One key reason for this was Federal policy at that time, which called for developers to construct large numbers of low-cost houses within a certain time frame (Fourth Malaysia Plan, 1981-85). This fuelled the rush to build houses, as developers had to split their attention between building low-cost units for the Government -a non-profitable activity- and building as fast as they could for profit.
"It was also very much a seller's market at the time, with many developers just churning out houses, sparing little thought to the design layout or quality of the product," Puvan said.
"Suburbs such as Ampang were booming, but sadly, as many of the residents there will attest, the terraces built at that time were far below far below par as far as quality was concerned.
"Rooms were disproportionate ... some were the size of a corridor, floor plans were poorly laid out and one would find very dangerous-looking staircases in many of these homes," Puvan said.
Along with poorly planned interiors, the foundations of these late-80s houses were also suspect. Today, he said, cracked ceilings and broken walls are not uncommon with terraces of that period found in Ampang.
However, Puvan said not all developments of that period were bad. Relatively decent houses were built in areas such as Subang Jaya and many of the responsible developers of the late-80s and early-90s have moved on to become some of today's most trusted names in property.
Ironically, even under a callous development environment , the terrace concept managed to climb further up the ladder of social acceptance. This could be attributed to the introduction of condominium living for the middle-income group, which predominantly appealed to the younger people. Terraces now began to cater to the more matured and affluent upper-middle class.
As a result, by the mid-90s, buyers of terrace units were a more sophisticated and demanding lot. Meeting the demands of this market eventually proved to be a catalyst for the revival for the revival of quality in this type of housing.
Another important factor that helped improve the overall development environment was that in 2000, the Government decided to take back much of the burden of building low-cost houses. This eased pressure on private developers, allowing them to concentrate on and improve their more profitable sources of income.
Improved sentiments in the industry, coupled with emergence of branding, spurred a renaissance in the construction of terrace houses, Puvan said.
"Buyers were getting smarter, but so were developers. They knew that they were now dealing with more wary customers as well as a more competitive market. In answer, new marketing and building concepts were fashioned to appeal to buyers and to get ahead of the competition."
Today, terrace houses are available in numerous forms, from small and compact starter houses to gated-and-guarded communities.
"Learning from mistakes of a past era and realising the effect product quality can have on the reputation of a developer has brought about improvement in the quality of construction by leaps and bounds," he said, adding that modern day terraces have also seen improvements in interior planning.
"If you look at some of the floor plans of recent developments, you'll find that most are pretty well through out. As opposed to the 80s, rooms once again are spacious, living spaces are roomy and overall, even in the more compact terrace offerings, there is better planning and usage of space. The comfort of the dweller has obviously been taken into consideration in designing these houses."
Puvan expects this positive trend to continue, saying that Malaysia is an aspirant society that is getting increasingly discontent with mediocrity.
"With development on the whole in this country beginning to set benchmarks for the region, I can only imagine that the terrace concept will also continue to evolve positively, achieving new heights and setting new benchmarks in the years to come."
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