Towards a genealogy of tropical architecture: Historical fragments of power‐knowledge, built environment and climate in the British colonial territories

Abstract

In this paper, we trace the history of tropical architecture beyond its supposed founding moment, that is, its institutionalization and naming-as-such, in the mid-twentieth century. We note that many of the planning principles, spatial configurations and environmental technologies of tropical architecture could be traced to knowledge and practices from the eighteenth century onwards, and we explore three pre-1950s moments of 'tropical architecture' in the British empire through building types such as the bungalow, military barrack and labourers' housing in the tropics. Unlike the depoliticized technical discourse of tropical architecture in the mid-twentieth century, this earlier history shows that so-called tropical architecture was inextricably entangled with medical and racial discourses, biopolitics and the political economy of colonialism. We argue that tropical architecture should not be understood as an entity with a fixed essence that is overdetermined by a timeless and unchanging external tropical nature. Rather, tropical architecture should be understood as a set of shifting discourses that privilege tropical nature, especially climate, in various ways as the prime determinant of built form according to different constellations of sociocultural and technoscientific conditions. We thus see 'tropical architecture' not as a depoliticized entity but as a power-knowledge configuration inextricably linked to asymmetrical colonial power relations.

Thermal modernity and architecture

“…13 The negative perception of and the attendant concerns with the heat and humidity of the tropics meant that the European colonists invested large amounts of intellectual and material resources to develop various urban planning strategies, architectural design principles and environmental technologies to ameliorate their own health and comfort. 14 When air conditioning was invented in the early twentieth century, Singapore awaited its arrival with much anticipation. Local newspapers were already reporting on the potential benefits of air conditioning even before the first system was installed.…”

Towards a Tropical Urbanism for Cairns, Australia

“…In former Anglo-European colonies, such as tropical Australia, this scenario unfolded in particular ways, primarily in terms of altering early climateadapted architecture and settlement forms through importing designs from far off, mostly temperate, places - including from major centres in the Australian south, which were in turn influenced by the Global North. Not only did this alter ways of living, but it also inhibited local-regional innovation in the planning and design field (Bridgeman, 2003;; Tay, 2001;; Chang & King, 2011). Even the classic 'Queenslander', the vernacular building style of Cairns from the 1920s - with its distinctive architectural elements and notable adaption to the climate -was not locally produced;; rather, it was eTropic: electronic journal of studies in the tropics a product of early kit homes designed and prefabricated further south in subtropical Brisbane and shipped up to the Far North Queensland city (Heritage Alliance, 2011;; Naylor, 2010).…”

Climate and colonialism

“…By the early 20th century, however, new developments saw sanitary and housing improvements which were not restricted to European colonists but their employees too, albeit “not out of benevolence but because of economic calculations” ‐ the workers being central to tropical economic production. Designs themselves were still heavily influenced by long standing climatic medical theories, despite the advent of germ theory around the turn of the 20th century (Chang & King, , p. 295). Indeed, while these discourses are very mobile from the 18th through to the 20th century, they do all privilege climate as a key influence.…”

“…Creating distinction and superiority in the colonies became more important throughout the second half of the 19th century and was manifest not only in clothing and medicine, but also lifestyles and the built environment which the colonists created. Chang and King (2011) identify a genealogy in the development of distinctive tropical architecture which is inextricably linked to shifting climatic, racial, and medical discourses. Three "moments" are identified.…”