Tropical Architecture

2. Local Knowledge
Abstract global knowledge is the result of the translation, extension
and consolidation of embodied local knowledge. In the tropics, certain
practices were standardized and regulated for ease of replication.
The publication of building and construction manuals were intended
to guide colonial officers and engineers in the construction of
administrative and military buildings. This “universal” abstract,
simplified knowledge is derived from the trial and errors deployed
within the bounds of local practical knowledge. The standardized and
technical instructions were not an innovation of the West brought to
the tropics; instead, the colonies were active sites of experimentation
that shaped these knowledge that were then standardized and
replicated.

3. Language (as a medium of architecture)
The multiplicity of labor sources in the colonies meant that languages
are a significant challenge in communicating the design and
construction methods to the laborers. Often, the only local language
spoken by colonial officers is Malay, but there are often more than
ten different languages spoken by all the workers who come from all
over the neighboring lands. To get around the linguistic problems,
workers were often given a sample, most likely fabricated in the
colonizer country, from which they would replicate the necessary
parts. In architecture, language is seldom discussed as a medium of
representation or communication. In the post-colonial development
of Malaysia, use of the Malay language was consciously mandated
to replace the use of the English language. Construction of Dewan
Bahasa dan Pustaka (Hall of Language and Literature) was one of the
first major undertakings of newly independent Malaysia.

4. Heterogeneity
In the early days, when a systematic knowledge of local resources
and conditions was not yet developed, the alignment of these various
heterogeneous elements hinged on various forms of improvisation,
on-the-job-learning and other strategies of coping on the part of the
engineers and surveyors involved. Typological studies of buildings in
the tropics show not only the influence of the local builder on colonial
construction methods but also indigenous building culture on colonial
architecture. Northcote Parkinson has argued as early as 1955 that
“these Penang houses … were not a tropical variant of something seen
in England. It was the English houses that were a Europeanised variant
of something seen in India.”

5. Tropicality / the Tropics
The tropical is an uncritical term that is seemingly apolitical because of
its naturalistic connotations. Tropical architecture includes bioclimatic
skyscrapers, modernist climate responsive buildings, colonial buildings,
vernacular houses and neo-vernacular resorts. The unspoken opposite
of the tropical is the temperate, yet there is no such designation as
temperate architecture. The tropics are an imaginative geography
constructed as an otherness of European civilization. It privileges the
purportedly timeless and unchanging essence of designing in the
tropics and negates the agency and culture of its people.

6. Biopolitics (Foucault)
Biopolitics, in the Foucauldian sense, means a regime of governance
that seeks to administer, multiply and optimize the biological life of the
population. In the British colonies this occurred through the provision
of health and sanitation facilities to the military. While the British
government “made” the soldiers to live, it “let” Chinese immigrant
labor die, by encouraging their consumption of opium and neglecting
to improve their health and sanitary conditions even though they were
absolutely instrumental to the construction of the aforementioned
health and sanitary facilities in the military barracks.

7. Colonial governmentality
Partha Chatterjee terms it the “colonial rule of difference.”
Governmentality was dislocated and modified in colonial contexts,
particularly the ways governmentality was translated in racialized,
deficient, excessive and fragmented manners in the colonial tropics.
Colonial governmentality with its illiberal and coercive rule therefore
contrasts with the liberal modes of European governmentality.

8. Ornamental governmentality
Chang coined the term ornamental governmentality to describe a
combination of governmental and sovereign power. In Ornamentalism,
David Cannadine argues that spectacles, rituals and honors were
central to British imperialism in terms of acting out and symbolizing the
hierarchical nature of the imperial society and legitimizing the imperial
order of things. Chang discussed the Singapore General Hospital as an
example of his pageantry where, in spite of explicit recommendations
to avoid “striving after architectural effect,” the SGH was built to a
historicist style, with Doric columns, a domed clock tower and other
classical details. Compared to the contemporary hospitals in other
Straits settlement cities, the SGH was unusually embellished to serve
as a symbol of the colonial state’s commitment to the health and
welfare of the local population.

9. Anthropocene
The anthropocene thesis states that the human being is an active
geological agent that has brought about irreversible transformations
on nature and our planet. It challenges the ontological distinctions
between climate and society or nature and human culture. The
anthropocene is highly relevant in our discussion of the tropics
because of the persistent concerns of climate and comfort in
architectural design in the region. In place of passive cooling strategies
that were implemented in the mid-20th century, mechanical cooling
became more prevalent in many tropical regions after that, marking
a shift from climate-responsive design to climate indifference.
Architecture is capable of affecting and even producing, rather than
merely responding to, climate.

10. Technoscientific regime of comfort
Metropolitan organizations such as ASHRAE (American Society of
Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers) established
the thermal comfort standard used for air-conditioned buildings
internationally, including countries in the tropics. These organizations
define comfort narrowly based on a few environmental parameters
that glossed over socio-cultural differences and ruled out socio-cultural
adaptations in maintaining comfort. They create a thermal comfort
standard that could only be met with mechanical cooling in the tropics
and through the spread of air conditioning and its convergence with
new design norms and building systems, the thermal comfort standard
changed the comfort expectation of many inhabitants of the tropics
and contributed to their air-conditioning dependency.

11. Pathologization of space
British medical experts in the mid-nineteenth century attributed the
high incidence of malaria to the insalubrious locality and the hot and
humid climate in the tropics. The frequent rain and intense heat were
thought to increase the decomposition rate of organic matters and
miasma emission. Poisonous miasma was believed to be the cause of
malarial fever and was believed to be more prevalent in spaces that
retard the free circulation of air or retain humidity.

12. Thesis Statement (draft)

13. My thesis seeks to reveal and confront the contradictions in Malaysia’s
post-colonial nation-building project. Post-independence Malaysia
embarked on a series of architectural projects that coincided with the
establishment of new institutions of government and culture. Over
time, Malaysia has had to grapple with issues of multiculturalism
and identity, prompting the creation of several exclusionary policies
that favored one ethnic group over the rest. My thesis hopes to
recontextualize Malaysia’s nation-building aspirations in light of its
historical past and contemporary realities.