James W Ferrie
James W. Ferrie was an architect in Singapore active from the late 1940s through the 1980s. Born in Glasgow, Scotland, Ferrie studied at the Mackintosh School of Architecture of the Glasgow School of Art. During the second world war, Ferrie served in the Burma campaign as a Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers, 2nd Division.¹ As recounted by his son John Alisdair Ferrie’s oral history, Ferrie’s commanding officer during the war was also an architect and when the war ended, he was “asked to report to office in Singapore with a set square and a T-square.”²
Ferrie came to Singapore in 1948 and was employed at Palmer & Turner Architects (P&T) as part of a three-year contract. The architect-educator Seow Eu Jin, who wrote his PhD thesis on The Architectural Development of Singapore in 1979, notes that P&T contributed a “freshness of outlook” to the local architecture scene in this period.³ With an established pre-war presence in Hong Kong and Shanghai, P&T’s first came to Malaya in the 1930s to design significant government buildings in Johor Bahru. The Singapore office was established immediately after the second world war. Eu notes that P&T “brought to Singapore from their Shanghai office several talented draughtsmen, knowledgeable and competent in all building work, timber detailing being their particular forte.”⁴
Some of the key projects that Ferrie worked on during his employment with P&T include Redifussion House at Clemenceau Avenue, MacDonald House at Orchard Road, and Odeon Cinema at North Bridge Road. The architect-educator Seow Eu Jin identifies Ferrie as the designer for Rediffusion House and Odeon Cinema, citing his private communication with Ferrie.⁵ These buildings reflected a prevailing “colonial modern” aesthetic. While their expressions were rectilinear, their prevailing design attitude nevertheless remained stylistic (i.e. similar to Art Deco) rather than ideological (i.e. “form follows function.”)
Ferrie saw an opportunity in Singapore’s rapid post-war development and set up his practice James Ferrie & Partners in 1952. In this post-war and pre-independence period, Ferrie’s early projects as an independent practitioner reflected his unique access to the resident expatriate community in Singapore. These projects include the Army School at Pasir Panjang (a junior school for children of resident British military personnel), Fitzpatrick’s Supermarket at Orchard Road, the American Club at Scotts Road, and also as a local supervising architect for the U.S. Consulate building for which the lead designer was A. Quincy Jones, a Californian architect known for his Case Study Houses.⁶
The Army School, later known as the British School (Rumah: Journal of the Singapore Institute of Architects vol 7, Sept 1964)
One interesting and unusual building that Ferrie designed during this early period was a house at 33 Swiss Club Road called the Laidlaw Thompson House, which still stands today. This low, mostly one-storey house was constructed in stone with a continuous single-sloping eaved roof, otherwise known as a skillion roof. Based on John Alisdair Ferrie’s oral history, this house took inspiration from the work of Frank Lloyd Wright - presumably his Prairie Houses and Taliesin East and West. Yap Mong Lin’s bachelor thesis, informed by first-hand interviews with Ferrie in the 1970s, mentions the influence of the Dutch architect Willem Marinus Dudok and Frank Lloyd Wright on James Ferrie in his youth.⁷ Formally, the Laidlaw Thompson house reveals subtle similarities with the work of both.
Laidlaw Thompson House at 33 Swiss Club Road drew inspiration from Frank Lloyd Wright and Willem Marinus Dudok. (image from visually enhanced Google Street View).
The account of architect Lee Seng Loong, who worked for James Ferrie & Partners for 17 years from 1963 to 1980, the latter 10 years as partner, offers a personal glimpse of the firm during this period. In Lee’s words:
Architects then were allowed to work with engineers in the same practice so we had our own engineers. The engineering was done by this guy called Lai Cho Yim, a Singaporean Chinese. He graduated from St John’s University in Shanghai - a very famous school.⁸
The Kuching State Secretariat in Kuching, Malaysia - completed in 1966 (James Ferrie - Chronology of works (preliminary) compiled by Athanasios Tsakonas)
He adds,
At that time, we were lucky as an expatriate firm. We had branches in Malaya, which was in KL, branches in Sabah, Kota Kinabalu, branches in Brunei and we took on a New Zealand architect to set up a practice in, of all places, the New Hebrides.⁹
James Ferrie & Partners was, by the 1960s, an architecture firm with a regional reach. Lee would work closely with Ferrie on a new State Secretariat Building in Kuching - a modernist podium and tower scheme that drew inspiration from Gordon Bunschaft’s Lever House.¹⁰
Ferrie actively contributed to the architectural profession in his time. He would be the last sitting president of the Institute of Architects Malaya (IAM) from 1966 to 1968 before the institute’s dissolution to pave the way for the present-day Malaysian Institute of Architects (Pertubuhan Akitek Malaysia, PAM). As recounted by John Alisdair Ferrie, Ferrie foresaw the onset of independence and nationalism in both Singapore and Malaysia and, consequently, the inevitable decline of the expat architect’s privileges. With Singapore’s independence in 1965, his practice successfully transitioned to the era of nation-building.
By the late 1970s, James Ferrie and Partners had grown to a team of 20 architects with 80 supporting staff.¹¹ The firm’s projects from the late 1960s through 1970s were diverse in form, type, and client base. There was a noticeable increase in their scale and complexity. One particularly groundbreaking project was the Wing-On Life Building (1975), which utilised precast “peripheral hyperbolic structural mullions” to support each slab of the 15-storey office tower to achieve column-free interior office spaces.¹² The same structural mullions function simultaneously as sun-breakers, creating ambient daylighting for the office interiors.
Historic image of Nan Chiau Girls High School (wikicommons)
Other notable projects completed by the firm during this period include the Nan Chiau Girl’s High School at Kim Yam Road (1969), the Kodak Building (1977), the Commercial Union Building (1977), Grace Assembly of God church (1971), factory buildings for Philips in Toa Payoh, as well as other regional projects like the Kuching State Secretariat and the Sabah Foundation Building in East Malaysia. Of the local projects, only the Nan Chiau Girl’s High School and Wing-On Life Building still remain in original form - albeit threatened. In East Malaysia, the Sabah Foundation Building (present-day Tun Mustapha Tower) remains a significant landmark.
Alongside his architecture practice, James Ferrie also engaged actively in other artistic pursuits. A 1986 Straits Times news feature reveals that he held a 10-day exhibition at the Lone Pine Gallery (in Ming Court Hotel) with a display of 58 watercolour paintings which were mostly seascapes.¹³ This followed on an earlier, smaller exhibition of his works in 1977. The same article reported that art runs in his family. Of his four grown-up children, one son is an architect, another is a potter, and one daughter is a graphic artist.
James W. Ferrie passed away in Chichester, England on 3 February 1993.
A 1986 Straits Times article featuring an exhibition of watercolours by James Ferrie.
Last modified on 10 August 2024 by Ronald C. T. Lim (Ar.).
References
“James Westwater Ferrie,” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopaedia, Wikimedia Foundation Inc, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Westwater_Ferrie accessed 5 Aug 2024
“James Westwater Ferrie,” Dictionary of Scottish Architects, https://www.scottisharchitects.org.uk/architect_full.php?id=404549 accessed 5 Aug 2024
John Alisdair Ferrie, Oral History, National Archives of Singapore, https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/oral_history_interviews/record-details/c5017e36-577b-11e9-a9f5-001a4a5ba61b?keywords=james%20ferrie&keywords-type=all accessed 2 Aug 2024
Athanasios Tsakonas, James Ferrie: Chronology of Works (Preliminary), unpublished.
Yap Mong Lin, James Ferrie: An Architect, School of Architecture, University of Singapore, B.Arch 1978/1979 (bachelor thesis, unpublished)
Historical Timeline of the Singapore Institute of Architects, https://sia.org.sg/about-sia/historical-timeline/ accessed 5 Aug 2024
“Work begins on US Consulate Building”, The Singapore Free Press, 5 February 1960
“Architect who feels ‘closely associated with water’ ”, The Straits Times, 27 January 1986
“Buildings in Singapore: 1960 - 1964”, Rumah: Journal of Singapore Institute of Architects, vol 7, Sept 1964.
Rumah: Contemporary Architecture of Singapore, Singapore Institute of Architects, Singapore 1981
“Tun Mustapha Tower,” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopaedia, Wikimedia Foundation Inc, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tun_Mustapha_Tower, accessed 6 Aug 2024
“Unusual Structural Concept - Peripheral Hyperbolic Mullions Support Unbonded Post-Tensioned Concrete Flat Slabs of Wing-On Life Building Tower”, The Construction Review, Singapore, September 1973.
Wong Yunn Chii ed. In Their Own Words: Pioneer Architects of Singapore Polytechnic, Research Archives Singapore Architecture, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 2019.
Seow Eu Jin, The Architectural Development of Singapore, University of Melbourne, PhD 1979 (PhD thesis, unpublished)
Footnotes
“James Westwater Ferrie,” Wikipedia: the Free Encyclopaedia, Wikimedia Foundation Inc, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Westwater_Ferrie accessed 5 Aug 2024
John Alisdair Ferrie, Oral History, National Archives of Singapore, https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/oral_history_interviews/record-details/c5017e36-577b-11e9-a9f5-001a4a5ba61b?keywords=james%20ferrie&keywords-type=all accessed 2 Aug 2024
Seow Eu Jin, The Architectural Development of Singapore, University of Melbourne, PhD 1979 (PhD thesis, unpublished)
Ibid.
Ibid.
Athanasios Tsakonas, James Ferrie: Chronology of Works (Preliminary), unpublished.
Yap Mong Lin, James Ferrie: An Architect, School of Architecture, University of Singapore, B.Arch 1978/1979 (bachelor thesis, unpublished), pdf p40
Wong Yunn Chii ed. In Their Own Words: Pioneer Architects of Singapore Polytechnic, Research Archives of Singapore Architecture, National University of Singapore, Singapore, 2019. p 53
Ibid, p55
Ibid, p52
Yap, James Ferrie: An Architect, pdf p 36
“Unusual Structural Concept - Peripheral Hyperbolic Mullions Support Unbonded Post-Tensioned Concrete Flat Slabs of Wing-On Life Building Tower”, The Construction Review, Singapore, September 1973. p73
“Architect who feels ‘closely associated with water’ ”, The Straits Times, 27 January 1986
