Shophouse

For the American restaurant chain, see ShopHouse Southeast Asian Kitchen.

A terraced layout allows a row of shophouses to extend as long as a city block permits, as exemplified by this long row of shophouses in Singapore. All the shophouses are linked by a covered passageway called the five-foot way at the front.

A shophouse is a building type serving both as a residence and a commercial business.[1] It is defined in the dictionary as a building type found in Southeast Asia that is "a shop opening on to the pavement and also used as the owner's residence",[2] and became a commonly used term since the 1950s.[3] Variations of the shophouse may also be found in other parts of Asia; in Southern China, Hong Kong, and Macau, it is found in a building type known as Tong lau, and in towns and cities in Sri Lanka.[4] They stand in a terraced house configuration, often fronted with arcades or colonnades, which present a unique townscape in Southeast Asia, Sri Lanka,[4] and South China.

  1. ^ Tirapas, Chamnarn. "Bangkok Shophouse: An Approach for Quality Design Solutions" (PDF). School of Architecture and Design, King Mongkut’s University of Technology Thonburi. Retrieved 31 July 2019.
  2. ^ "Shophouse". Lexico. Archived from the original on 18 October 2019.
  3. ^ Cite error: The named reference lim was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ a b Kudasinghe, KSKNJ; Jayathilaka, HMLB; Gunaratne, SR. "Evolution of the Sri Lankan Shophouse: Reconsidering Shophouses for Urban Areas" (PDF). General Sir John Kotelawala Defence University. Retrieved 17 August 2020.