China’s Two Tropical Architecture

Climate, Techno-Scientific Regime, and Global Socialism in Southern China and Sub-Saharan Africa, 1955-78

Abstract

Moving beyond the former architect-centric narrative, this paper offers an alternative techno-political history of Maoist China’s two tropical architecture, i.e. its subtropical architecture in the hot-humid Southern China and its overseas architectural aid in the decolonizing Africa in the Cold War, in a transnational geo-political, cultural and techno-scientific context. Based on China’s state archives, institutional grey literature, African local reports and other secondary sources, it looks into the much lesser- researched actors, practice and things, especially the agency of some non-architect experts and their institutions in the tropical knowledge production around industrial projects. Drawing on theories of Science, Technology and Society (STS) and critical temperature studies, it develops the notion of “techno-scientific regime of architecture” to reveal how China’s two architecture was both concurrent and co-constitutive. It contributes to not only the existing literature of postcolonial urbanization differentiated by socialist actors, but also recent scholarly concerns about low-carbon cooling technologies in the built environment.