Review: A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture: Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience, by Jiat-Hwee Chang

Book Review| December 01 2017 Review: A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture: Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience, by Jiat-Hwee Chang Jiat-Hwee ChangA Genealogy of Tropical Architecture: Colonial Networks, Nature and TechnoscienceLondon: Routledge, 2016, 290 pp., 97 b/w illus. $180 (cloth), ISBN 9780415840774; $53.95 (paper), ISBN 9780415840781 Vandana Baweja Vandana Baweja University of Florida Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (2017) 76 (4): 551–554. https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2017.76.4.551 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Vandana Baweja; Review: A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture: Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience, by Jiat-Hwee Chang. Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 1 December 2017; 76 (4): 551–554. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/jsah.2017.76.4.551 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentJournal of the Society of Architectural Historians Search Tropical architecture developed in the nineteenth century as a global discourse across the networks of the British, French, and Dutch empires. Each node that became a site of tropical architecture had a distinct trajectory and areas of emphasis, yet climatic design unifies the diverse histories of these sites. The multiple discourses that have defined tropical architecture as a field developed diachronically through numerous disciplinary terrains, including medicine, sanitation, meteorology, civil engineering, architecture, and environmental design. In A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture, Jiat-Hwee Chang builds upon scholarship inaugurated by Mark Crinson, Hannah le Roux, and Ola Uduku, who first revealed tropical architecture to be a neocolonial discourse that developed after World War II and operated within asymmetrical power relationships.1 Chang examines tropical architecture from the vantage point of Singapore, producing a highly granulated history that shows how unequal power relationships were spatialized through regimes of technoscientific knowledge. This scholarly... You do not currently have access to this content.