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MenuHomeUpfront Now Up Books Towns Structures People Firms Lexicon | TOUNG, Kouang ChienBorn: fl.1942Aeronautical Engineer, ArchitectSACA:Reg No: 1005 Year registered: 1947 | ||||
[Chipkin (1993:249) has him by the name CHIEN] BArch (Witwatersrand, 1946), MIA (SR). CHIEN graduated as an engineer from the Chinese National Aeronautical College and then worked, first as a draughtsman and then as a designer, in an aircraft manufacturing company in China, from 1938 to 1941. He arrived in South Africa in 1942 from Shanghai when it came under Japanese occupation, a colonel attached to General Chiang Kai-shek's mission. While in Johannesburg during the war he switched his attention to architecture, graduating from Wits in 1946.He joined the firm of JANKS, KLING and TROPE, and when that firm separated he stayed on in JANKS's office. In the early 1950s he left JANKS to join the partnership of Jacques MORGENSTERN. Lakofski, JANKS's main client, followed suit, taking his work with him. Here the partnership was styled TOUNG, MORGENSTERN and MORGENSTERN. In 1959 he is recorded as a practising member of the TPIA of address 106 5th Avenue, Mellville, Johannesburg. In 1961 he took up residence in New Zealand. By 1969 he is recorded as a retired member of the TPIA of address Sunderland Road, Pakuranga, Aukland, New Zealand. He was ''a man of patrician manners bearing an ancient ancestral name'', ''a man with indefatigable energy and concentration'', ''he could complete the design and drawing up of a synagogue in a single forty-eight-hour work stint. Nevertheless he remained an engineer-architect, involved with numerate questions and problems of production'' (Chipkin 1996:249). References
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