Browse 80,000 books in a cinema that burned down twice
The damage is the design
REXKL sits on Jalan Sultan at the edge of Chinatown. The bookshop occupies the upper floors; below it are food stalls and small shops in what was the cinema's public space.
Why it's unique
The Rex opened as a single-screen cinema in the 1940s, burned twice, and sat derelict for years. The conversion did not repair it. Broken floor tiles, scorched surfaces, original railings and switches were all kept, and 80,000 books were installed around them on shelves that run floor to ceiling and are laid out deliberately as a maze rather than as aisles.
Adaptive reuse usually means erasing what was there and keeping the shell. This kept the damage and made it the point, which is why the room reads as a ruin you can browse rather than a shop in an old building.
Before you go
It is genuinely a maze and the stock is not shelved the way a normal bookshop would be. Give it longer than you think and accept you will not find a specific title.
The books are heavily discounted remainders, which is the BookXcess model — the range is wide and unpredictable rather than curated. Go on a weekday; weekends fill with people photographing the shelves.