Dorothy Pelzer

Dorothy West Pelzer was an architect and ethnographer with a deep interest in Southeast Asia. Born in 1915, she obtained her Master’s degree in Architecture in the 1950s before joining the International Voluntary Service (IVS), where she was posted to Vientiane and throughout Laos from 1962 to 1963. After leaving IVS, she stayed in Southeast Asia to continue her research.

Between 1962 and 1970, as part of her goal to document ethnographic information and cultures of Southeast Asia, Dorothy Pelzer travelled extensively throughout the region, often under difficult conditions, eventually visiting nine Southeast Asian countries: Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. In the course of her field research, she assembled an astounding 31,000 black & white photographs and 7,000 colour slides. Her intention was to collect her materials into a book titled Houses Are People to demonstrate the intimate relationship between a house and the community that created it.

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