Reconsidering Tropical Architecture and Urbanism: Narratives of Disease, Discomfort, Development and Disaster

(Hardback)

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Reconsidering Tropical Architecture and Urbanism explores the complex factors - from climate to colonialism - that have shaped ideas of tropical architecture from the eighteenth century to the present.

While many studies view tropical architecture simply as the development of climatic design strategies and technologies, this book looks deeper, aligning a history of tropical and subtropical architecture with cultural as well as environmental narratives. Themes ranging from climate, tropical medicine, and health, through to race, identity, whiteness studies, development, decolonization, disaster and resilience are each examined through a series of insightful case studies spanning diverse geographies including Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Australia. Together, they propose the tropical building or city as a cultural artefact, informed and influenced both by climate and by colonial and post-colonial discourses on the tropical imaginary.

Divided into four sections, each introduced by a key cultural or environmental historian, the book presents four overarching themes Disease, Discomfort, Development, and Disaster which encapsulate different anxieties surrounding colonisation, acclimatisation, settlement, and decolonisation.

Challenging existing perceptions of tropical architecture and inviting readers to critically reassess established narratives, Reconsidering Tropical Architecture and Urbanism presents an alternative history that exposes the intertwined relationships between tropical architecture, climate, colonialism, settler colonialism, and labour in the global south.

Author Bio

Dr. Deborah van der Plaat is a Senior Research Fellow in Architecture at the University of Queensland (Australia). Her research examines the architecture of nineteenth and twentieth century Australia and its intersection with theories of artistic agency, climate, place, migration and race. Writing histories of Queensland architecture is also a focus within her work.

Dr. Vandana Baweja is an associate professor in the School of Architecture at the University of Florida, Gainesville, USA. Her research areas are global histories of Tropical Architecture and Sustainable Architecture. She is the Co-Editor of Arris: The Journal of The Southeast Chapter of The Society of Architectural Historians.

Professor Tom Avermaete is Chair of the History and Theory of Urban Design at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. His research focuses on the architecture of the city and the changing roles, approaches and tools of architects and urban designers from a cross-cultural perspective. Avermaete is editor of OASE. Journal of Architecture and member of the advisory board of the Architecture Theory Review and Docomomo Journal.