I’m back from Yangon, where together with my co-authors I launched the Architectural Guide Yangon at the Goethe-Institut Myanmar. A quick summary of the event after the jump.
Category Archives: Burma
Benjamin Polk
During the research for our Yangon Architectural Guide, we came across this American architect. He built the Tripitaka Library (Pitaka Taik), also known as the Great Buddhist Library in Yangon. Some scribbles below the jump.
Tripitaka Library, photo by Manuel Oka
Society and Space
On top of the post about our Architectural Guide Yangon, here comes my introduction to the book. In selecting a photo to run with this, I randomly chose a map of the Kaba Aye (World Peace) complex I found in a book in the Library of Congress.
Architectural Guide Yangon
It is done! The book Elliott, Manu and I have been working on for over two years got published earlier this month. 400 pages, 300+ images, almost a kilogram in weight, it’s become quite a tome! Some uncollated thoughts after the jump.
Yangon Architectural Guide
The book in its final design has now been officially submitted to the publisher. This concludes an important step of a journey that has taken almost two years to this day.
This is what Manuel’s been busy with…
Yangon 2015
Happy New Year! This blog has become slightly inactive over the past months as the bulk of my writing takes place inside the manuscript for the forthcoming Yangon Architectural Guide. To wrap up the research for the book, I was in Burma for a few weeks in December.
New pedestrian overpass – Strand Road
Puzzling Yangon
Now that the writing process for our book is in full swing, I am dealing with some historical puzzles occasionally. Herewith two that I have shared with our Facebook readers recently. One is about a famous high school, the other about a beautiful yet dilapidated official building on Pansodan Street.
Raglan Squire
We are making good progress with our architectural guide to Yangon. With all the coverage on pre-independence heritage architecture (most recently on the occasion of President Obama’s visit to Yangon), I thought that post-war architecture could use a little more airtime, e.g. these two beautiful representatives.
Technical High School, Yangon (1956)
Yangon Architecture Guide update
A quick update on our work on the Yangon guide: our Facebook page is nearing 6,000 followers and we had an interview up with the Myanmar Times. Work on the manuscript is progressing. A few of the recent posts after the jump. You can see those and more also on our Tumblr page.
The former Hongkong and Shanghai Bank Continue reading
Myanmar Times interview
Our interview with the Myanmar Times came out a few days ago: On a research assignment in 2013, Ben Bansal, a writer and graduate of the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, arrived in Myanmar for the first time. “It was unlike any place I had been before, yet somehow familiar at the same time,” he wrote by email recently.
Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise building (1908)