Hotel Penaga

Hotel Penaga gets its name from Tanjong Penaga, meaning the cape where the penaga trees grow. This was the original Malay name for the first settlement on Penang Island, where GeorgeTown stands today. It is not unusual for Malay places to be named for the plants that were found there. Penaga trees (Calophyllum inophyllum) grow on the seashore, produce excellent wood and have traditional medicinal qualities. While there are no penaga trees left in GeorgeTown, the name is an echo of the original place that we thought worth commemorating, and we have planted some penaga trees in our hotel garden.

The Owners

The owners of Hotel Penaga are Hijjas Kasturi, a well-known Malaysian architect, and his environmentalist wife Angela. ... [+] More Although we live outside Kuala Lumpur, we have long been fascinated by the architectural and cultural history of GeorgeTown.

In 2008, we bought three rows of pre-war Art Deco double-storey terraces in GeorgeTown, and decided to convert them into the sort of hotel in which we would like to stay while exploring the delights of this city. By the time we bought them, many of the terraces had been left vacant and all had fallen into disrepair. A thorough renovation, respecting our twin interests of architecture and environmentalism, was needed to convert the site into a viable, beautiful and comfortable hotel.

We hope that you will enjoy staying at Hotel Penaga as much as we have enjoyed renovating and furnishing it. While the hotel is not a pure heritage landmark, in the sense of a strict restoration of the original buildings, it is an example of how older buildings fallen on hard times can be revived and made relevant again. This spirit of creative adaptation and cultural m?lange is itself a part of the intangible heritage of GeorgeTown.

The Renovation

Hijjas' many years of experience in design and construction suggest that you only get one shot at renovating a building. While some of our planned changes were radical, they were essential to supporting the luxurious scale of modern service we were committed to provide.

The biggest change was adding two floors to the houses on Hutton, and one floor to the houses on Transfer, to accommodate 45 rooms. We also added an elevated jack roof to each building, making space for mechanical and electrical equipment like air conditioners, pumps and water tanks.

Replacing outdated plumbing and wiring necessitated new flooring, so we chose not to retain the cracked and aged patina of some renovations. Throughout the ground floor of the hotel, we used traditional encaustic cement tiles, which are still manufactured in Indonesia using presses from the 1930s. We retained the original timber upper floors, and sourced second-hand lumber recovered from demolished colonial buildings wherever possible. We replaced the corrugated asbestos roof with second-hand 'Indian' tiles that are common on older Penang buildings. Although we could not find the decorative Peranakan tiles to replace the ones lost on the front walls of the houses on Clarke, we did recreate the windows and doors on the frontage of the shops on Hutton and Transfer in the same style as Clarke, using new tube-lined decorative tiles from China on the fa?ade. The granite slabs featured in the garden came from China as ballast in Chinese ships trading with Malaya in the early 20th century.

The Furnishings and Art Works

The 'antique' Chinese furniture pieces in the hotel are actually contemporary reconstructions made in Zhongshan from remnants of old furniture. Their old Asian cottage aesthetic fits the age and ambience of our buildings and makes each room unique. The kitchen equipment, spa baths, LED lights, table lamps, modern furniture and the many wood carvings and wedding beds were sourced from Guangdong, giving Hotel Penaga a Chinese ambience. In Indonesia, too, we found many furnishings that suited us perfectly, like the white glass pendant lights, contemporary but reminiscent of the old Dutch style; the Venetian mirrors; and the modern stained glass that we used to create feature windows, mixing the art deco style of Frank Lloyd Wright with a Chinese aesthetic.

All the rooms in Hotel Penaga are hung with historic prints, maps and contemporary art works from Malaysia, Australia and Southeast Asia. In the compendium will find details of art works in your room.

Facilities

The Artists? Residency
Since 1994, the owners have sponsored a residency for visual and performance artists at their home in Kuala Lumpur (www.rimbundahan.org). The residency continues in GeorgeTown, and artists are invited to stay in the hotel, work on their practice, and share their experiences with our guests.

The Garden
The garden is planted with mainly indigenous species, and if you would like more information about them, the concierge has a plant list.

Green Building

The restoration and redevelopment of Hotel Penaga has used recycled materials wherever possible. The roof tiles have been salvaged from demolished buildings in Penang. The timber for structures and floors has been sourced from demolished colonial period buildings throughout the Peninsula. The reconstructed 'antique' furniture is from southern China where bits and pieces of old pieces are refabricated.

Elsewhere new materials are generally handmade, like the encaustic cement patterned floor tiles from Vietnam and Indonesia, where they still use 80 year old presses and techniques. Carpets are either handmade bamboo mats from east Malaysia, patchwork kilims from Turkey, patchwork cow skin from China or sisal from India.

The garden is planted with mostly indigenous Malaysian species, and planting is designed to reduce heat and glare, increase soil permeability and provide as much greenery as the space would accommodate.

Water for the garden and some toilet flushing comes from roof runoff. Our tank capacity is 10,600 litres stored under the garden.

Water is heated using a combination of Solarmate MMS60 solar panels (Transfer only) http://www.solarmate.com.my/product.html and Seers Hybrid Hot Water System (Hutton). This is a new Malaysian product that activates heat exchange from the immediate environment to heat water. http://www.seers.com.my/comparison.html We have five heaters, model number SI-500l. Clarke uses standard coil heater tanks.

Every room has a choice of ceiling fan or inverter air-conditioning, for guests to make their choice.

We have 99 solar photovoltaic panels from Sanyo (Model: HIP-200NKHB5) that can generate a total output of 20.79kWp that will be sold back to the national grid.

On completion the hotel will be given a green rating by the Green Building Index.

Hotel Penaga will be the first heritage restoration in Malaysia with a green rating.