Emerging Governance and Economic Issues in the Construction Industry in Malaysia by Omar Osman, Penang: Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia, 2008, 206 pp. Energy and Ecology - A View of Malaysia Beyond 2020 by Hugh Byrd, Penang: Penerbit Universiti Sains Malaysia, 2008, 70 pp.

Abstract

The School of Housing, Building and Planning at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) began in 1973 and during the following few years, there was a book that was widely circulated by the faculty among students called the Manual of Tropical Housing and Building: Part 1 Climatic Design written by O. H. Koenigsberger, T. G. Ingersoll, Alan Mayhew and S. V. Szokolay. The book was published in 1974, by Longmans, but one new copy can still be obtained for US USD 150 and two used ones at Amazon.com for USD 65.99 the last time I checked. The school must have ordered numerous copies (then hot off the press) – presumably the book was to be the playbook with which building design in Penang and Malaysia would be based. Instructions were given as to how factors such as temperature and heat flows, lighting and sunlight, as well as noise could be taken into account when a building was constructed right down to how much window awnings have to protrude to shade off the sun’s rays. The book was teeming with formulae, charts and graphs and there was even a sun-path protractor that marked off solar angles for different hours of the day at different times of the year for different latitudes off the equator.