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Dorothy
Pelzer (1915-1972), Architect/Researcher
Dorothy
Pelzer was born in America in 1915. She studied at the Institute of Design
in Chicago from 1937 to 1941.
In 1947, she went to the MIT and obtained a master’s
degree in Architecture in 1950.
Subsequently, she both practised and taught architecture
until 1958. Pelzer joined the International Voluntary
Service at Vientiane and Laos between 1962 to 1963.
After she left IVS, Pelzer decided to stay on in Southeast
Asia doing research on her own. She wanted to document the fine traditional house forms which
were fast decaying or being destroyed without records being
kept.
Dorothy
Pelzer travelled extensively, under difficult conditions,
in nine Southeast Asian countries: Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia,
Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Laos and the Philippines. She had assembled 31,000 black and white
photographs and 7000 colour slides. She believed that the
domestic village houses embodied the culture through their
architecture, social customs and religious traditions.
In 1970, Dorothy Pelzer returned to America trying to get
publishers for her book Houses are people.
She did manage to get the contracts but unfortunately
she became seriously ill with cancer in 1971.
She died in 1972 without a draft.
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The Frederic Mason Slides
The Frederic Mason slides collection consists of 880 colour
slides including 217 slides on Japan and Hong Kong. The Malaysian
slides consist of some on tin dredging and rice plantations.
The Singapore slides comprise some on Pulau Tekong schools
and Siglap Orthopaedic Hospital.
Professor Frederic Mason (1913-2000) lived his life as an educationist.
He had a distinguished undergraduate career at Cambridge where
he obtained a first in both parts of the Natural Science Tripos.
After teaching at Manchester Grammar School, Repton, and Leeds
University, he was appointed in 1950, Professor of Education
at the University of Malaya in Singapore. Whilst there, he
organised the training of local graduates wishing to enter
the teaching profession and was influential in the decision
to introduce native language teaching into the local schools.
In 1957, the task of establishing a branch of the University
in Kuala Lumpur was entrusted to him. Before he left he was
awarded an honorary doctorate in law.
After returning to England, he studied for holy orders at
St Augustine's College, Canterbury and was appointed principal
of Christ Church College, Canterbury in 1960. Christ Church
was the first Anglican teacher training college to be created
in the twentieth century. He retired in 1975.
Professor Mason had a lifetime interest in the people and places
where he lived and worked. When working in Singapore and Kuala
Lumpur, he took a great interest in the region. He travelled
in Malaya and visited Borneo, Indonesia, Cambodia, Hong Kong
and Japan. He photographed the places he visited and the people
he met on his journeys and when he died he left an extensive
collection of slides. His son, Peter, donated the Southeast
Asian slides to this library for future research.
Reference: Peter Mason, 20 September 2002.
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