JULY 1 — Malaysia has lost one of her most important architect-engineers, if not THE most important. Stanley Edward Jewkes, PMN, OBE, passed away peacefully at the Mission Oaks Hospice in Oxford, Florida, on Sunday, aged 98. He leaves behind his wife Ella, his daughter Carole, his son Peter and their families.
Jewkes was the architect and engineer of both Stadium Merdeka (1957) and Stadium Negara (1962), both located on Petaling Hill, and was the Director of the Public Works Department from 1959 to 1962. He arrived in Malaya in 1941 to join the Public Works Department, serving first in the districts of Krian and Keroh.
War soon broke out in the peninsula, and he was made a lieutenant in the Federated Malay States Volunteer Force that fought the Japanese while they advanced southwards towards Singapore. He was a passenger on the SS Kuala that was sunk by the Japanese that included K. Nunn and K. Brundle. From Pompang Island, he went on to serve in the Indian army as a technical co-ordination officer before returning to Malaya.
Born in the US, he travelled to Birmingham with his parents after World War I and won a scholarship to study at Dudley Grammar School. He then read engineering and architecture at Northampton Institute as well as the London Polytechnic before being hired as the chief engineer of British Steel Construction.
In 1950, he was asked to head the new Design and Research Branch, where he ensured that engineering capabilities of the department were maintained on par with most developed nations in the world.
As Director PWD, he convinced the Cabinet about the location of a triumvirate of national structures: the Parliament House was to be sited at its present location near Lake Gardens, adjacent to the National Monument and Masjid Negara. The National Mosque was subsequently relocated upon the insistence of the Tunku.
Jewkes had also provided preliminary designs for both the Parliament House and the National Monument, which were relinquished under his own instructions in favour of designs by W. Ivor Shipley and Felix de Weldon, respectively.
He developed the Fast Track method of project administration and construction, and permitted public sector consultants to assist with projects, such as inviting BEP for the terminal design of Subang International Airport.
Under his charge, the Engineering Faculty as well as Pantai Valley for the University of Malaya was designed and completed within a year of the decision to transfer it from Singapore.
Together with Tunku Abdul Rahman, he had envisioned Petaling Hill (formerly Coronation Park) to be the prime civic, green public space for all Malaysians for all posterity. For this reason, the Tunku Abdul Rahman Park (later Merdeka Park, 1958) was landscaped with many features including a Merdeka Sun Clock that Jewkes also designed.
Elsewhere on the hill, Stadium Merdeka won global engineering accolades as having the tallest pre-stressed structures then known in the world with the 140-feet tall lighting towers, as well as longest cantilevering shell roofs in the world. For the unique roof structure design at Stadium Negara, Jewkes left instructions for its materials to be changed after 20 years but this was eventually not carried out.
His other contributions to the city include reworking and clarifying traffic circulations around the city, as well as supervising the construction of Klang Gates Dam for KL’s water supply, the site of which he also determined after extensive surveys.
Jewkes was equally thorough and incorruptible in his administrative roles. He taught Advanced Engineering at the KL Technical College and nurtured a whole generation of local engineers at PWD who would take over after his departure from Malaysia, including the awarding of overseas engineering scholarships based on meritocracy rather than on race.
It was extremely fortuitous for Malaysia that he was helming the country’s developmental agency at the most crucial time for post-war KL and Malaysia. His multiple interests in engineering, architecture and city planning made him the perfect person for the job.
Jewkes joined the US consultancy firm Louis Berger after his work in Malaysia, where he designed a version of Stadium Negara in Thailand: the Kittikachorn Indoor Stadium in Bangkok among other projects.
Besides family and projects, he had sustained his interests in philosophy by ruminating about his life in relation to his own encounters, eventually compiled and published as “Humankind: Planet Earth’s Most Enigmatic Species” in 2001 by 1stBooks under the pseudonym of “Arcas” (ISBN: 0-7596-8786-2)
In my interview with Jewkes conducted in 2002, he told me about the book and it might be appropriate to close this obituary with his words: “My dealings with people throughout the world, of different ethnicities, of different religious beliefs, led me to believe that we’re all the same; we’re very enigmatic. No one is better than anyone else or worse than anyone else.”
* Dr Lai Chee Kien is the Assistant Professor, Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore.
* This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication. The Malaysian Insider does not endorse the view unless specified.
