How sunlight, humidity and independence made a new ism

Photo: Black Star Square, Accra by Ghana Public Works Department - film still from 'Tropical Modernism_ Architecture and Power in West Africa’, © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Daniel Nelson

Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Independence is not a blockbuster exhibition that will draw large crowds. Will anyone uninterested in Ghana or India in the 1960s pay £14 for a peep?

I doubt it. It’s a small, specialist look at a little-known topic. Many may dismiss it as boring. But in these days of commercially driven museum displays, the V&A deserves kudos for its erudition and commitment to the study of overlooked aspects of history — in this case, the emergence of a long-forgotten architectural style.

It sounds dry, but what heady days they were: the ending of colonialism across swathes of land, the first tremors in the global earthquake that is still shaking racial stereotyping, the emergence of figures such as Kwame Nkrumah, ”The Redeemer”, with his thrilling vision of a United Africa, and Jawaharlal Nehru, with his promise of dams and development that would transform the lives of millions of South Asians.

Freedom was proclaimed as the Union Jacks came down and the flags of the new nations were hoisted. The new leaders announced new dawns.

They were right. It was an epochal shift. Everything needed a fresh start, including the physical appearance of these newly independent entities.

But the path is never straightforward: there are always twists. It was two Brits, dissatisfied with architecture in their own country, who moved to Ghana and, though not particularly interested in local cultures, brought a new approach to building design. 

Independent Ghana’s first President wanted local architects and local design concepts. He established an architectural school, the first in sub-Saharan Africa, and invited qualified students to return home. Their work, and that of their counterparts in India, is acknowledged in the exhibition.

Nehru also turned his back on the old to usher in the new, encouraging modernism and local skills.

Tropical modernism was born, symbolising science and progress, underpinned, as the exhibition makes clear, by the need to filter and harness sunlight and control heat and humidity.

Like most previous isms, tropical modernism has been beached, as money and power have driven architecture in other directions. Few people in the world today will even have heard of the phrase tropical modernism, though marks have been left through influences on subsequent cohorts of architects. Similarly, Nkrumah and Nehru are merely history book names to many or are even disparaged by the men who currently hold presidential office.

All this is neatly chronicled by the exhibition, beautifully set out in the context of the politics of the time, and illuminated by scattered sculptures, an informative film and the sound of West African Highlife gently drifting through the gallery.

I’d love British schoolkids to see the exhibition: it spotlights an important decolonial, independence moment, but most youngsters will need a gifted teacher to bring it alive for them.

Perhaps it could be combined with a visit to the more glamorous Diva exhibition at the same museum. The V&A caters for every taste.

* Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Independence, £14,  is at the V&A Museum, Cromwell Road, SW7 until 22 September