Towards a genealogy of tropical architecture

Historical fragments of power‐knowledge, built environment and climate in the British colonial territories

Bibliographic Data

ID20153651
AuthorsJiat‐Hwee Chang (0000-0001-8611-5068, National University of Singapore, corresponding author), Anthony King (0000-0002-8131-396X, Binghamton University), Anthony D King
Year2011
Volume32
Issue3
Pages283-300
Publication date2011-11-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSingapore Journal of Tropical Geography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0129-7619 • E-ISSN: 1467-9493
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-9493.2011.00434.x
OpenAlexW2163264332
LanguageEN
Citations received14
References cited14

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

Archaeology · Biopower · Colonialism · Political science · Politics · Privilege (computing) · Sociology · Architecture · Architecture and Cultural Influences · Architecture, Design, and Social History · History · Law

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