Calvin Po has reviewed the V&A exhibition, Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Independence for The Spectator. The article, which is titled Why architectural modernism was championed by the rulers and the ruled, begins with Calvin’s personal experience in Hong Kong. It recounts the ‘market halls with brise-soleils sheltering us from the glare; housing-block stairwells with perforated blockwork letting in dappled light and breeze; classrooms accessed from open-air decks, with clerestory windows cross-ventilating the stale, sticky air.’ Telling us of buildings which shared a ‘global lineage – and a name: tropical modernism.’

Calvin describes the exhibition, which includes a historical film and archival material from the AA archives and library, as ‘creditably nuanced’. Calvin also notes that the exhibition paves way for us to consider the amount of agency architects have within their design briefs. The answer at the time of tropical modernism being, as Calvin writes, ‘in England not so much; in Africa a lot more.’ Calvin continues to explain the role that the AA’s Department of Tropical Architecture had within the movement and the main critique of tropical modernism as a colonial movement at large. Calvin offers a succinct opinion on the exhibition, as well as the social and political factors it begins to unpack. The full article can be read on The Spectator’s website here.

The exhibition, Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Independence, is at the V&A until 22 September.

Image: Unity Hall, part of the Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana, designed by John Owuso Addo and Miro Marasović. Image courtesy of the V&A Museum, London.