Wednesday 8 May, 12pm GMT, Dr Ian Tan: ‘The Iron Skeleton and the Imperial Skin: Materiality and the Construction of Modernity in Colonial Hong Kong and Singapore’, chaired by Kelvin Ang.

Ian Tan completed his PhD in Architecture at the University of Hong Kong in 2023. He holds professional membership in architectural and heritage organisations based in UK and globally, such as IHBC, ICOMOS, and ICOM. He is transitioning from academia to industry-driven research; as he recently took on the position of Arup’s Research Lead in East Asia.

The talk examines the history of iron architecture in colonial-era Hong Kong and Singapore. It aims to not only understand the material’s circulation between Britain and these two imperial outposts, but also the extent to which it catalysed broader movements of physical objects, building expertise, and architectural practices around the imperial British sphere between the late 19th through the early 20th centuries.

Ian’s PhD research explores how iron served as a key material component in structures beyond those typically considered as constitutive of the built environment, including quotidian infrastructure such as lighthouses, quarantine stations, godowns for storage, markets, as well as religious and cultural edifices such as churches and printing houses. These iron structures, as his research argues, emerged as a crucial mediator between different constituencies of colonial societies, such as between native merchants and colonial administrators, foreign missionaries, and their local congregations, as well as Western-trained building professionals and Asian craftsmen, among other relationships.

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