Civicness and Tropicality: Re-examining the Modernist Civic Buildings from the "Global South"

Abstract

<p>Building on existing discourses on the role of architectural modernism in constructing post-colonial national identities in the ‘Global South,’ this panel seeks to revisit the post-World-War-II public constructions through the lens of climate localization in the Anthropocene. Built in the age before the proliferation of air-conditioning, these buildings, ranging from the work of Karim Sayed in Egypt to Van Mollyvan in Cambodia to Mendes da Rocha in Brazil to William Lim in Singapore, were already using tectonic devices such as the deep façade, brise soleil, roof overhangs, atriums, and more, to shade and facilitate air flow. Significantly, these works have localized many stylistic elements of the Modernist Movement in the specificities of their geographic and climatic contexts, manifesting what Sri Lankan architect Minnette da Silva had termed ‘Regional Modernism’ and what Greek architectural theorist Alexander Tzonis named ‘Critical Regionalism.’ Today, global aspirations for the gleaming, tautly-enclosed and thin-skinned new structures, which represent economic prosperity and technological advancement, are threatening to replace these earlier civic buildings in regards to both their functional and symbolic values.</p><p>By focusing on the modernist public buildings and infrastructures situated in the diverse geographies of the ‘Global South,’ this panel also seeks to challenge the long assumed divides between the ‘South’ and the ‘North’ by considering works in recently developed economies such as Singapore or southern China. Here, the ‘South’ is understood not as a cardinal direction but locales where cultural practices have been shaped by climatic and geographic specificities and materially manifested in their built structures. This panel will offer a critical re-examination of the genealogies and materialities of some of the lesser-known modernist public buildings or the lesser-known aspects of well-known modernist architecture from the ‘South’ under the frame of climatic and contextual responsiveness and thereby consider the potential for their valorization and conservation.<br></p>