Arthur Oakley Coltman

Arthur Oakley Coltman (A.O. Coltman) was a British architect practising in Malaya for 32 years where he worked as manager of the architecture firm Booty Edwards & Partners. He arrived in Malaya in 1925 and retired in 1957.

He was on active service during the First World War before working in the Transvaal, and was officially listed as an absentee member of the Transvaal Provincial Institute of Architects from about 1931 to 1938.

He was responsible for many of Kuala Lumpur's greatest Art Deco structures, including the Clock Tower, OCBC Building, and Oriental Building. He also designed the Anglo-Oriental Building near Merdeka Square, which is now known as Wisma Ekran; the Lee Rubber Building, on Jalan Tun H. S. Lee; the Rubber Research Institute, on Jalan Ampang; and the Odeon Cinema, on Jalan Tuanku Abdul Rahman.

Coltman died in Sussex, England at the age of 67 in 1961.

He worked on the buildings including:

Situated at Jalan Tun Perak (the former Java Street), next to the  SP7  KJ13  Masjid Jamek LRT station, the five-storey Oriental Building rose to the towering height of 82 feet and was the tallest in Kuala Lumpur. Originally called the Oriental Building, it housed Radio Malaya until 1968 and had 'Radio Malaya' in large letters on its façade. The Oriental Building also housed the High Commissioner of India, government departments dealing with the issue of trade licenses, as well as the Malaysian divisional office of the Life Insurance Corporation of India.

The building has a curved frontage. Between of the arcade on the ground floor is a central feature consisting of perpendicular piers running up three storeys. Around the central feature, which projects slightly from the frontage, is an acanthus leaf border worked in precast concrete. A white stucco frieze of interlocking discs frames the panel. There is 18,000 feet of floor space in the building arranged around an air-well. The ground floor was designed for retail. The central entrance and show windows had curved plate glass that had to be specifically made in England. Italian tiles were used in the floors throughout the building. The upper four floors, of which one complete floor was reserved for the Oriental Government Security Life Assurance Company, was used as office space and was reached by a lift and staircase at the side of the building. The basement was constructed separately, with windows fitted with sliding steel doors. The contract time for completing the structure was eight months, and the construction was to start shortly after late November 1931, with the architects reported as Messrs. Booty and Edwards, the contractors as Gammon (Malaya) Ltd., and Steen Sehested as the consulting reinforced concrete specialist.

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