Architect Shin Chang on reviving Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown with ChoCha Foodstore and REXKL

Malaysian architect Shin Chang, who grew up in Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown, is leading efforts to revive the historic neighbourhood. Through projects such as ChoCha Foodstore (2016) and REXKL (2019), he has drawn visitors back to a district that had declined from the late 1980s onwards.

Malaysian architect Shin Chang, who grew up in Kuala Lumpur's Chinatown, has been instrumental in reviving the historic neighbourhood through projects such as ChoCha Foodstore and the transformation of the former Rex Cinema into REXKL. In an interview with CNA Luxury during his visit to Singapore for the Archifest Conference, Chang reflected on his efforts to bring new life to an area that had declined from the late 1980s to the early 2000s.

By the 2010s, Chinatown had become home to shops selling imitation clothing, massage parlours and stalls selling DVDs and CDs, according to a 2019 report in The Edge Malaysia. Rapid urbanisation and economic growth had drawn businesses and residents to new commercial districts and suburbs such as Cheras and Petaling Jaya. Chang's own family moved to Cheras as the cost of living in central Kuala Lumpur rose.

In 2016, Chang and his business partner Penny Ng opened ChoCha Foodstore, a restaurant and bar in a 1920s shophouse along Petaling Street. The interiors retained the building's original mosaic floors and decorative metal window grilles. Business was initially slow, but queues began forming after six months. In 2019, Chang and his partners transformed the former Rex Cinema into REXKL, a community hub for arts, culture and events that now houses BookXcess bookstore, an artisanal ice cream shop and a coffee bar. REXKL was also empty for its first three months before Chang started events such as karaoke night to draw crowds.

Chang established his architecture firm Mentahmatter Design with Ng in 2013. The studio's design philosophy, encapsulated in the word mentah (meaning "raw" in Malay), celebrates natural textures of concrete, brick and metal while allowing plants to grow freely. Chang said he prefers preserving signs of age in buildings rather than glossing them up. "A cracked glass is a mark of age. For me, that is not a flaw. It is a memory," he said.

Chang sees his projects as part of a growing cultural ecosystem in Chinatown and is exploring opportunities such as co-living to bring residents back to the area. "We never saw REXKL as an end to itself. We treated it as a pilot project to prove that a small collective act of care can bring real positive impact to the city," he said.