Research Catalog

Title

A genealogy of tropical architecture : colonial networks, nature and technoscience / Jiat-Hwee Chang.

Author

Chang, Jiat-Hwee

Publication

London ; New York : Routledge, 2016.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

xxviii, 290 pages : illustrations; 26 cm.

Summary

A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture traces the origins of tropical architecture to nineteenth century British colonial architectural knowledge and practices. It uncovers how systematic knowledge and practices on building and environmental technologies in the tropics were linked to military technologies, medical theories and sanitary practices, and were manifested in colonial building types such as military barracks, hospitals and housing. It also explores the various ways these colonial knowledge and practices shaped post-war techno scientific research and education in climatic design and modern tropical architecture. Drawing on the interdisciplinary scholarships on postcolonial studies, science studies, and environmental history, Jiat-Hwee Chang argues that tropical architecture was inextricably entangled with the socio-cultural constructions of tropical nature, and the politics of colonial governance and postcolonial development in the British colonial and post-colonial networks.

Series Statement

The architext series

Uniform Title

Architext series.

Subjects

• Architecture and society > Singapore
• Architecture and society > Tropics
• Architecture, British colonial
• Architecture, Tropical > English influences

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Machine generated contents note: Tropicality and colonial nature -- Colonial technoscientific networks and circulations -- Governmentality and colonial power -- Plan of the book -- pt. I Building Types -- 1. Emergence of the Tropicalized House: Comfort in the Heteronomous and Heterogeneous Conditions of Colonial Architectural Production -- Presentism and historiographical problems -- Heteronomy and the dependence on local builders -- Heterogeneity and building artifacts -- Multicultural influences, comfort and house typologies -- 2. Engineering Military Barracks: Experimentation, Systematization and Colonial Spaces of Exception -- Military barracks as tropicalized "global form" -- Royal engineers, constructional training and experimental tradition -- prefabricated tropicalized barracks -- Barrack synopses, climates and type plans -- "Global form" In colonial spaces of exception -- intelligible enclave -- 3. Translating Pavilion Plan Hospitals: Biopolitics, Environmentalism and Ornamental Governmentality -- Light, air and coolness: the "new" pavilion plan hospital -- Metropolitan origins and technologies of population -- Quantification and environmental technologies -- "accumulation of neglect" beyond the enclave -- Colonial monuments and ornamental governmentality -- 4. Improving "Native" Housing: Sanitary Order, Improvement Trust and Splintered Colonial Urbanism -- Knowing the governed, regulating the environment -- Deficient "information order" and belatedness -- defining problem -- Housing experiments for a variegated "public" -- anatomy of a failed case -- pt. II Research and Education -- 5. Constructing a Technoscientific Network: Building Science Research, "Rendering Technical" and the Power-knowledge of Decolonization -- missing technoscientific dimensions -- colonial research model -- Network building and the tropical building division -- (Im)mutable mobiles and climatic design -- Conflicting interests and the contingent center -- 6. Teaching Climatic Design: Postcolonial Architectural Education, Scientific Humanism and Tropical Development -- new model of architectural education -- Decolonization, the RIBA and Commonwealth architecture -- Climate and fundamental principles -- Pedagogy and curriculum -- rise of building science and architectural research -- legacies -- Conclusion: Tropical Architecture Today -- Nature, tropicality and anthropocene -- Technoscientific constructions and network building -- Power and governmentality.

ISBN

• 9780415840774
• 0415840775
• 9780415840781
• 0415840783
• 9781315712680 (canceled/invalid)

LCCN

2015044456

OCLC

• ocn930364258
• 930364258
• SCSB-1856122

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library