Modernist architecture and ‘the tropical’ in West Africa: The tropical architecture movement in West Africa, 1948–1970

This is a short account of the evolution and development of the Tropical Architecture movement in British West Africa, from the late 1940s to the early 1970s. It considers the conceptual grounding for Tropical Architecture, its key architects and a select number of buildings that describe the era. Set in a chronological format the paper considers the socio-political, economic and aesthetic reasons for the movement's initial rise and eventual demise. Whilst focusing specifically on the architecture of British West Africa at the time, it argues that the issues being dealt with and the Tropical Architecture produced in this region had resonance and similarities to what was going on and being built elsewhere in the world, indeed that tropical architecture was a globalised phenomenon in the 1950s, well before the contemporary discourses on globalisation. It concludes by discussing the demise of the movement and the banality of the contemporary, ‘post-tropical’ architecture, which is prevalent in West Africa today.