Presenter: Clarence Aasen. 

This illustrated presentation will be about a wide range of ethnic Chinese communities across Southeast Asia. It will concentrate more specifically on the local scale, public expressions of those communities—particularly, their cities and towns, architecture, and artefacts; and what those expressions meant, partly in terms of their forms and aesthetics, but mainly in relation to their roles in and effects on the local social lives and communal identities of those various Chinese peoples.

This presentation is part of a much larger, on-going research project in which Professor Aasen has been involved since 1986, and about which he has written one book (Clarence Aasen, The Architecture of Siam, A Cultural History Interpretation, Oxford University Press, 1998). Almost all of the illustrations used will be from the fieldwork which Professor Aasen has conducted in China and across Southeast Asia over the last 25 years.

Clarence Aasen was a Professor of Architecture at Carleton University in Ottawa. Between 1988 and 2005, he held the positions of Dean, Chair and Professor, and Head of School in the Faculty of Architecture and Design and in the School of Design at Victoria University in Wellington, New Zealand. Since 2005, he and his wife have lived in Vancouver.

 This is the second in the Fall 2013 SFURA seminar series and will take place at 11:30 a.m. in the Halpern Centre.  (Note the time is earlier than last year's seminars.) All members of the SFU community are welcome to attend these events. The talks are free and no registration is required.