Village Housing In The Tropics

Tropical Architecture, although now a highly contested and debated term, is the name given to European modern architecture that has been modified to suit the climatic and sometimes cultural context of hot countries. These hot countries were labelled ‘the tropics’ and were often European colonies, or countries that had recently won their independence. Fry & Drew’s book, written on the threshold of the end of the British Empire, was one of the first publications to offer practical advice to architects working in ‘the tropics’, based on the empirical studies they conducted whilst based in British West Africa during the Second World War. The book with its numerous illustrations, plans and easy to follow explanations became a key manual for all architects working in hot climates, and in particular those tasked with designing dwellings and small town plans. Although the Royal Engineers and Schools of Tropical Medicine had long been designing and campaigning for better planning, improved sanitation and had for example developed methods of cross-ventilation, this book became an instant hit. ‘Tropical Architecture’ suddenly bloomed into its own distinct canon, and by 1955 the Architectural Association had set up a course specialising in tropical architecture, led for a short time by Fry. Village Housing in the Tropics had a significant impact when it was written on a profession that had had little guidance on working in hot climates and on architecture students and universities who began to modify their courses to accommodate different conditions. Although from a post-colonial perspective many scholars now associate this architecture as being a continuation of the Imperial mission, this does not reduce the significance of the publication. Indeed, Tropical Architecture is regarded as being the forerunner to ‘green architecture’, developing passive low energy buildings that are tailored to suit their climate and built with local materials.

Tropical Architecture, although now a highly contested and debated term, is the name given to European modern architecture that has been modified to suit the climatic and sometimes cultural context of hot countries. These hot countries were labelled ‘the tropics’ and were often European colonies, or countries that had recently won their independence. Fry & Drew’s book, written on the threshold of the end of the British Empire, was one of the first publications to offer practical advice to architects working in ‘the tropics’, based on the empirical studies they conducted whilst based in British West Africa during the Second World War. The book with its numerous illustrations, plans and easy to follow explanations became a key manual for all architects working in hot climates, and in particular those tasked with designing dwellings and small town plans. Although the Royal Engineers and Schools of Tropical Medicine had long been designing and campaigning for better planning, improved sanitation and had for example developed methods of cross-ventilation, this book became an instant hit. ‘Tropical Architecture’ suddenly bloomed into its own distinct canon, and by 1955 the Architectural Association had set up a course specialising in tropical architecture, led for a short time by Fry. Village Housing in the Tropics had a significant impact when it was written on a profession that had had little guidance on working in hot climates and on architecture students and universities who began to modify their courses to accommodate different conditions. Although from a post-colonial perspective many scholars now associate this architecture as being a continuation of the Imperial mission, this does not reduce the significance of the publication. Indeed, Tropical Architecture is regarded as being the forerunner to ‘green architecture’, developing passive low energy buildings that are tailored to suit their climate and built with local materials.

In the dry and humid zones

Edwin Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew are two key figures of British architecture in the second half of the twentieth century, their most important work was the book Tropical Architecture in the Dry and Humid Zones, a manual compiled from the experience acquired in Ghana and Nigeria between 1949 and 1960. The manual is the formalisation of a design method specific for tropical areas, the search for a renewed rooting of modern architecture, not based on formal research or the revival of folkloric themes, but on the close relationship between environmental support and anthropic intervention. The design method has its roots in African colonial history and was the result of a long process of adaptation of Western modernist ideas to the extreme climatic conditions of the African continent. A cosmopolitan localism based on the application of science in humanistic terms and capable of combining global and local dimensions was translated into an approach that respected the deep roots of tradition while providing innovation in terms of architectural solutions.