Kajian tipologi rumah kedai awal era Belanda di bandar Melaka : sumbangan kepada bidang pemuliharaan di Malaysia

Early Shop Houses in Malacca was built during the Dutch Colonization, since 200 years ago. Since its long existence, the building faces a lot of treats such as dilapidation of building structure, insensitive renovation and building demolition to give way to modernization. Hence, effort to restore these buildings through conservation works had been carried out by the local council but unfortunately only front facade of these buildings were being restored. The purpose of this research is to clarify that when handling any conservation works in Malaysia, aspect of architectural typologies should be taken holistically. This aspect involves studies of site typology, facade typology and plan typology of selected buildings in case studies. The research methodology involves two approaches, the historical approach and the descriptive approach. Historical approach is a collection of secondary data resources which historical evidences were gathered from related research done on Malacca and architecture. On the other hand, descriptive approach involves field work which covers site observation, photo recording, sketches and interview as well as measured drawing of selected buildings. Research area was situated in the old area of Malacca which was gazetted under Conservation Area of Malacca City Council. Case studies are selected from Early Shop Houses in this area. There are 291 Early Shop Houses in the research area and 112 of them are in the high category. High category is described as buildings which still maintained the original style and layout of the Early Shop Houses. Out of those, 36 shop houses were selected as case studies. The result shows that although the shop houses were classified under the same style that is Early Shop Houses, they still possess different site typology, facade typology and plan typology. They were built individually, on different sites and comprised four different facade typologies and two different plan typologies. In conclusion, for any conservation work towards the Early Shop Houses, the task should be handled individually and the overall concept of typology should be taken into account because the work does not only involve the architectural conservation but also deals with the preservation of historical and cultural aspects