Village Housing in the Tropics

Village Housing in the Tropics PDF

Author: Jane Drew

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-11-26

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 1135018227

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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.

Healthy Homes in Tropical Zones

Healthy Homes in Tropical Zones PDF

Author: Jakob Knudsen

Publisher: Axel Menges

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9783936681819

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Thr oughout the tropics there is a huge diversity in house design and use of building supplies based on centuries of indigenous ex- perience, customs, and availability of local resources for construc- tion. These differences in building style and materials affect the in- door conditions and comfor t of occupants, which in turn influence the occupants' exposure to certain infectious diseases. In this book the authors describe the architectural designs and materials of rural houses in two countries in Asia (Thailand, Philippines) and two in Africa (The Gambia, T anzania). They analyse the effect of design on the indoor climate and r elate these factors to health, notably the risk of mosquito-bor ne infectious diseases such as malaria. Based on their findings and a detailed understanding of local building styles, they describe a series of house modifications that could enhance comfor t whilst r educing health risks.

Tropical Toolbox

Tropical Toolbox PDF

Author: Jacopo Galli

Publisher: LetteraVentidue Edizioni

Published: 2022-03-24

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 886242728X

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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.

Architecture and the Housing Question

Architecture and the Housing Question PDF

Author: Can Bilsel

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2022-06-16

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 1351182951

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Architecture and the Housing Question examines how the design and provision of housing around the world have become central both to competing political projects and to the architecture profession. How have architects acting as housing experts helped alleviate or enforce class, race, and gender inequality? What are the disciplinary implications of taking on shelter for the multitude as an architectural assignment and responsibility? The book features essays in the historiography of architecture and the housing question, and a collection of historical case studies from Belgium, China, France, Ghana, the Netherlands, Kenya, the Soviet Union, Turkey, and the United States. The thematic organization of the collection, interrogating housing expertise, the state apparatus, segregation and colonialism, highlights the methodological questions that underpin its international outlook. The book will appeal to students and scholars in architecture, architectural history, theory, and urban studies.

Learning Spaces in Africa

Learning Spaces in Africa PDF

Author: Ola Uduku

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-06-14

Total Pages: 186

ISBN-13: 1317152107

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With a key UN Sustainable Development Goal for 2030 being to make basic education available to all the world’s children, Learning Spaces in Africa explores the architectural, socio-political and economic policy factors that have contributed to school design, the main spaces for education and learning in Africa. It traces the development of school building design, focusing on Western and Southern Africa, from its emergence in the 19th century to the present day. Uduku’s analysis draws attention to the past historic links of schools to development processes, from their early 19th century missionary origins to their re-emergence as development hubs in the 21st century. Learning Spaces in Africa uses this research as a basis to suggest fundamental changes to basic education, which respond to new technological advances, and constituencies in learning. Illustrated case studies describe the use of tablets in refugee community schools, "hole-in-the wall" learning and shared school-community learning spaces. This book will be beneficial for students, academics and those interested in the history of educational architecture and its effect on social development, particularly in Africa and with relevance to countries elsewhere in the emerging world.

Modernism’s Magic Hat

Modernism’s Magic Hat PDF

Author: Ijlal Muzaffar

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2024-07-16

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 1477329501

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Examines the role of architecture in the history of global development and decolonization. In Modernism’s Magic Hat, Ijlal Muzaffar examines how modern architects and planners help resolve one of the central dilemmas of the mid-twentieth-century world order: how to make decolonization plausible without accounting for centuries of capital drain under colonial rule. In the years after World War II, architects and planners found extensive opportunities in new international institutions—such as the World Bank, the UN, and the Ford Foundation—and helped shape new models of global intervention that displaced the burden of change onto the inhabitants. Muzaffar argues that architecture in this domain didn’t just symbolically represent power, but formed the material domain through which new modes of power acquired sense. Looking at a series of architectural projects across the world, from housing in Ghana to village planning in Nigeria and urban planning in Venezuela and Pakistan, Muzaffar explores how architects and planners shaped new ideas of time, land, climate, and the decolonizing body, making them appear as sources of untapped value. What resulted, Muzaffar argues, is a widespread belief in spontaneous Third World “development” without capital, which continues to foreclose any global discussion of colonial theft.