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

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.