Tropical Toolbox

Edwin Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew are two key figures of British architecture from the second half of the twentieth century. Their most important work was the book ''Tropical Architecture in the Dry and Humid Zones'', a manual compiled from experience acquired in Ghana and Nigeria between 1949 and 1960. The manual is the formalisation of a design method specific to tropical areas and the search for a renewed rooting of modern architecture, not based on formal research or the revival of folkloric themes, but on the close relationship between environmental support and anthropic intervention. The design method has its roots in African colonial history and was the result of a long process of adaptation of Western modernist ideas to the extreme climatic conditions of the African continent. A cosmopolitan localism based on the application of science in humanistic terms, their approach was capable of combining global and local dimensions and translated into an approach that respected the deep roots of tradition while providing innovation in terms of architectural solutions.