Tropicality

Building on Tradition: From Kampong to High-Rise, the ‘tropical city’ and its manifestation in Singapore

The elusive topic of tropicality has pervaded conversations surrounding the design and function of Singaporean architecture since the imposition of Western architectural styles and layouts following the ratification of the Treaty of Singapore in 1819. This article will argue that the categorisation of Singapore as a ‘tropical city’ comprised of ‘tropical architecture’ is the product of colonial power that was integrated into the production of knowledge about the built environment and is therefore inherently responsible for the continuation of discourses that associate Southeast East cities as the ‘other’ to those in Western, temperate climates.1 However, as architects like Mr Tay Kheng Soon illustrate the term ‘tropical city’ has also served as a reclamation of Singaporean independence and the celebration of the city’s culture and agency through a selective incorporation of European modernity.2 This article analyses a Straits Times interview conducted in 1989 by Patrick Daniel and Caroline Chan of the Singaporean architect Mr Tay Kheng Soon who applied his vision of the tropical city to Singapore to detach the independent city-state from the epistemic conquest of British hegemony.3

Figure 1: Article in The Straits Times, “Concept for future city: Living in a work of art”.4

Tay envisioned an “intelligent tropical city” and argued that a tropical city could emancipate Singaporeans from the economic dominance of Britain in the region.5 He aimed to re-politicise urban planning by separating the city from the “mono-cultural compactness” of colonial offices and housing by designing Singapore to be a “work of art” and a compact city capable of “increasing business opportunities” and “providing a medium for intense, social, cultural and economic exchange.6 By using the tropical city concept, Tay identifies that the architectural aesthetics of tropicality were attached to colonial and post-colonial power relations and seeks to separate Singapore from these streams of power. By designing a city which prioritises “poly-cultural compactness”  to form a  “support structure for their [people’s] activities… and yet contribute to the cooling of the city as a whole” he illustrated that colonial power was ingrained in the construction of Tropicality. Equally, he highlights that Signporean architects had the necessary tools to begin deconstructing this discourse.7

The introduction of ‘tropical architecture’ established a sphere of knowledge which ran through Imperial networks during the colonisation of Singapore and was utilised by the Colonial Office to ‘other’ Southeast Asian architecture in opposition to temperate architecture.8 The term tropical architecture prioritises the climate in its terminology whereas temperate architecture is categorised by regional geographic zones or nations, imposing a homogenous staticity onto Singaporean urban development.9 Tropicalisation involved the surface-level modification of Western governmentalities to tropical conditions rather than the necessary transformation.10 Tay emphasises that in the 1980s tropicality was not considered “another symbol of modernity” and he asserted that the “big bland blocks” of highrises that covered the city were “still a sign of the captive mind”.11 Indeed, the “captive mind” he refers to in the Straits Times interview illustrates the power-knowledge concept and the overt control colonial powers had over conceptions of tropical architecture and their subsequent limitation of the built environment to benefit colonial wealth and power.12  The perpetuation of this reductive understanding of the city’s needs justified the colonial administration’s choice to prioritise Singapore’s sanitation and fears of reassuring contamination issues, rather than holistically solving civic issues through the optimisation of the built environment.13

Tay’s Straits Times interview and his successive proposals for tropical urbanism began to combat the circulation of British colonial networks and their epistemic conquest over the focal point of Singapore’s housing strategies by proposing socio-economic structural problems were addressed which would in turn resolve sanitation issues.14 By proposing that the tropical city is defined by its interconnectedness, Tay defined the tropical city by its, “combination of tropical rain forest with the city by increasing transpiration”.15 To establish Singaporean independence from colonial power relations Tay designed a climate-responsive built environment, working in favour of its citizens.16 His holistic approach to the city and its economy assimilated tropical architecture into the tropical climate rather than adopting temperate architectural models that exacerbate the urban heat island effect.17 As Chang explains, the architectural aesthetics of tropicality are inseparably bound to colonial and postcolonial power relations and the implementation of Western hegemony through ideals of social order and the application of policy.18 These concepts are closely linked to the sanitisation movement and the colonial government’s preoccupation with contamination, these fears greatly influenced the structure and organisation of Singapore’s housing and the developments that occurred beyond the European socio-spatial enclaves of the city.19

Tay’s reclamation of the term ‘tropical city’ reflects the complex relationship between language and the built environment in Singapore’s postcolonial legacy. Alongside other regional architects, Tay produced a deviating discourse on tropical architecture that challenged the cultural and economic supremacy of the West by proposing a multi-tiered city. By prioritising the city’s functionality, his urban planning methods and vision were ahead of their time and later were used to distinguish Singaporean identity as heterogonous and separate from Western notions of tropicality.

  1. Chang Jiat-Hwee, A Geneology of Tropical Architecture: Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience (New York, 2016), p.7. [↩]
  2. Chang, A Geneology of Tropical Architecture, p.1. [↩]
  3. Chang Jiat-Hwee, “Deviating Discourse: Tay Keng Soon and the Architecture of Postcolonial Development in Tropical Asia”, The Journal of Architectural Education, 63:2 (2010): 153. [↩]
  4.  Kheng Soon Tay, “Concept for the future city: Living in a work of art”, The Straits Times, Singapore, 8th May 1989, p.16 Accessed at: https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/newspapers/digitised/article/straitstimes19890508-1.2.49.2 (Accessed 24/10/2023) [↩]
  5.  Kheng Soon, “Concept for the future city: Living in a work of art”. [↩]
  6. Ibid. [↩]
  7. Ibid. [↩]
  8. Chang, A Geneology of Tropical Architecture, p.5 [↩]
  9. Ibid, p.6 [↩]
  10. Chang Jiat-Kwee, “Tropicalizing Planning, Sanitation, Housing and Technologies of Improvement in Colonial Singapore, 1907-1942”, in Robert Pecham and David Pomfret (eds.) Imperial Contagions: Medicine, Hygiene and Cultures of Planning in Asia, ( Hong Kong, 2013), p.41. [↩]
  11. Kheng Soon, “Concept for the future city: living in a work of art”.  [↩]
  12. Chang, A Geneology of Tropical Architecture, p.6. [↩]
  13. Chang, “Tropicalizing Planning, Sanitation, Housing and Technologies”, p.37. [↩]
  14. Chang, “Deviating Discourse”: 154. [↩]
  15. Kheng Soon, “Concept for the future city: living in a work of art”. [↩]
  16. Ibid. [↩]
  17. Chang, “Deviating Discourse”: 157. [↩]
  18. Chang, A Geneology of Tropical Architecture, p.2. [↩]
  19. Chang, “Tropicalizing Planning, Sanitation, Housing and Technologies”, p.38. [↩]

Prince of Wales Island: A British ‘tropical paradise’

As the Europeans expanded their imperial domains across the globe in order to secure lucrative commodities, they colonised lands that were vastly different to their home countries, with the climate being the most pressing difference as it affected how people lived, the gastronomy and the animals that inhabited there.1 In this context, the primary account written in 1804 by George Leith, the first Governor General of Prince of Wales Island, known as Penang Island in the present day will be used as a centrepiece to illustrate the biased and flawed attitude the Europeans had towards the tropics and how this source ties into the wider theme of tropicality.

Given that the account was published during the time the British were seeking to expand their hold overseas to dominate trade under the Napoleonic Wars, cutting French supplies and establishing a foothold in the Malacca Straits was a top British priority as stated in the source.2 In order to make the colony functional, the British had to build infrastructure and provide amenities for the both the coloniser population, new immigrants and the locals. In the source, Leith explicitly states that the island is abundant with water and soil, the harbour is well shielded by the Malay peninsula, overlooks the Straits of Malacca, has reasonable high altitude hill retreats to escape the dry season, and the biggest settlement, George Town has brick buildings, hospitals, roads and houses which implies a sign of modernity. By stating all those factors, it can be assumed that Leith is attempting to encourage settlement on the island as all those factors make it attractive for colonists looking to maximise their profits in an expanding empire. Secondly, he notes how the island has a reasonable climate as compared to India. This point strikes me because, in the secondary readings, it was often assumed that the Indian subcontinent was the epitome of ‘tropical romanticisation’ due to its abundant natural resources and relative similarities to how the British or other Europeans envisioned a ‘tropical society’ where there are abundant resources and good weather.1 By shining the island’s potential in a positive light, it allows the Europeans to see that its climate is favourable and suitable for economic investment. This is in stark contrast to my elective secondary source reading on French Indochina, in which the French saw their colony as a deathbed with a 2% death rate and that the average life expectancy of a Frenchman is only around the 40s as the colony was filled with diseases.3 As a result, the ‘tropical climate’ or European colonies with hot weather can vary from being romanticised as a paradise or described as a place filled with disease and ‘bad air’ like how the French saw Indochina. As a result, the tropics are often ‘imagined’ in the European mindset.

Leith explicitly classifies occupations and characteristics of certain races in a sub-section called Inhabitants. He describes the Chinese, Parsees and Chooliahs as the races doing most of the hard work and are well-behaved which makes them useful as coolies and labourers to successfully run a colony. Conversely, he describes the Malays as indolent, vindictive and treacherous because they are an uncivilised race and are useless for labour. This signifies that inhabitants in the tropics are often seen by the Europeans are more lazy which is based on ancient Greek ideas of how the hotter the climate, the lazier and less warlike an individual becomes as illustrated by Hippocrates.4 This signifies that ‘tropicality’ is not based on science but rather supported by pseudo-philosophy by ancient philosophers like Hippocrates which do are not grounded in scientific methods and create a racial division line that separates races according to their ‘usefulness’ and perceived ‘nature’.  Therefore, it is evident why ‘tropicality’ is a flawed and biased concept. In the case of the British Strait Settlements, the British like Leith perceived that the Malays are lazy and uncivilised, Chinese and Indian labour had to be bought in from other colonial possessions in order to maximise profits, thus altering the settlement pattern and demography of present-day Malaysia and Singapore.

To sum it up, the concept of ‘tropicality’ is biased in the sense that it was based on pseudo-science, assumptions and, imaginations hence making it flawed.

  1. Arnold, David John. The Tropics and the Travelling Gaze: India, Landscape, and Science, 1800-1856 Introduction + Ch 4 From the Orient to the Tropics [↩] [↩]
  2. Leith, George, Sir, A short account of the settlement, produce, and commerce, of Prince of Wales Island, in the Strait of Malacca  [↩]
  3. Jennings, Eric Thomas. Imperial Heights: Dalat and the Making and Undoing of French Indochina Ch 1 Escaping Death in the Tropics [↩]
  4. Hippocrates v. 1 ‘Airs Waters Places’ XII-XVI pp. 105-117 [↩]

The Truth is Duller than Fiction? Theories of Tropicality in the Perception of India in the 1800s

The history of ‘Tropicality’ is a long one, with the first writings dating back to Hippocrates, the ‘father of medicine’. In his Airs, Waters, Places, he outlines the climatic differences in Asian and the supposedly corresponding racial characteristics. Just as Galenic theories on humours were to dominate medicine until well into the early modern period, these perceived links between climate and character were held as fact in Britain and Europe throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, and used to justify colonial expansion and control.

These theories are naturally now considered untenable to the modern reader. This does not mean that reading them is not without worth, not least because of the massive contradictions that they contain, and more so that this appears to be completely disregarded within them.

To take one of the greatest examples, look to Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws, specifically his ideas on the climate of Asia. His argument was that the ‘strength’ of Europe vs the ‘weakness’ of Asia could be entirely explained by Europe’s temperate climate compared to Asia’s lack of a temperate zone, whereby “the places situated in a very cold climate there are immediately adjacent to those that are in a very warm climate”, and so “the brave and active warrior peoples are immediately adjacent to effeminate, lazy and timid peoples; therefore, one must be the conquered and the other the conqueror.”1 He explains his reasoning as the fact that Asia had been ‘subjugated’ 13 times compared to Europe’s 4, which he gives as Roman, Barbarian, Charlemagne, and Norman2 He then gives the determining factor of Europe’s relative peace and stability as the broadness of the temperate zone, in that while there is a huge difference in temperature between the northern- and southernmost reaches of Europe, the climatic change is so gradual that “there is not a noticeable difference between them.”3. As such, “the strong face the strong”, and so one ‘race’ is unable to subjugate the other4.

This contradiction of temperature and racial characteristics can be further seen in later accounts of the Tropics, particularly with regards to India. In taking writers such as Hippocrates and Montesquieu as undoubted fact, the perception of Asia and India was that of a single and relatively unchanging climate. David Arnold then takes this further in his work Tropics and the Traveling Gaze: India, Landscape and Science, 1800- 1856 by showing how the perception of the Tropics was then muddled even further through the growth of popular fiction. This led to the creation of what he terms “a single impression of colour, light, exuberance, and elegance.”5 Arnold shows that when faced with the reality of India and Asia’s hugely varied climate and areas of seemingly dull, barren plains instead of the rich, Edenic visions made popular through stories such as the Arabian Nights, travellers could find themselves becoming weary and despondent. In particular, he gives the example of Victor Jacquemont, a French naturalist who travelled to India to study botany. Arnold argues that Jacquemont’s previous visits to Haiti, where his brother was a businessman (and possible plantation owner), had given him an idealised view of the Tropics which he then expected to see replicated in India. He was then “bitterly disappointed” to find out that this was not the case.

Rather than admit his own shortcomings or attempt to view India with a more benevolent eye, Jacquemont followed in the same tradition as Hippocrates and Montesquieu. He concluded that “the fault is not in myself: it lies with the things themselves, with the country.”6 Whether this was any consolation to him seems doubtful, but in this at least he was following in the footsteps of his predecessors, and those that followed after him kept his words in mind themselves, just as many travellers no doubt do the same today.

  1. Charles de Secondat Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws ed. Anne M. Cohler, Basia Carolyn Miller and Harold Samuel Stone, (Cambridge, 1989), pg. 280 [↩]
  2. ibid, pg. 281. [↩]
  3. Ibid, pg. 280 [↩]
  4. ibid. [↩]
  5. David Arnold, Tropics and the Traveling Gaze: India, Landscape and Science, 1800- 1856, (Washington, 2006), pg. 112. [↩]
  6. ibid, pg. 132. [↩]