The term “tropical architecture” is often associated with Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew and their publications “Tropical Architecture in the Humid Zone” and “Tropical Architecture in the Dry and Humid Zones.” According to Lefaivre/Tzonis, tropical architecture is the expression of a particular kind of people (as is film, art, and music), rather than merely a matter of ventilation and sun shading distinguishing itself from Tropicalism. (Lefaivre/Tzonis 2001:14)
The term becomes relevant in the early 1950s and is followed by discussions on regional, sustainable, and climate-adaptive architecture and can be seen as a bond between colonial planning and modern architecture.
The governability of the population during colonial rule was aimed primarily at the body, whereas discourses on sanitation and hygiene were explicitly part of colonial settlement planning. An essential role of town planning concepts was to control the spread of diseases. The separation of European reservations with a non-residential area called a building free zone was promoted by these medical discourses. Frederick Lugard, a British colonial administrator in the early 20th century, proposed a width of 440 yards: “Although the flying range of a mosquito was probably not known, Lugard wrote of the need for the zone to be wide enough not to offer ‘resting-places for mosquitoes’.”(Home 1997: 147/148)The “green belt” (or zone sanitaire) was implemented as an integral part of colonial planning in order to assure the division between the urban and the rural, avoiding the transfer of diseases between these parts: “All the entrances to every town should be through a park, that is to say a belt of park of about a mile or two in diameter should entirely surround every town (...) This would greatly contribute to the health and pleasure of the inhabitants; it would render the surrounding properties beautiful and give a magnificent appearance to a town, from whatever quarter viewed.” (Home 1997: 17)
During British colonial rule, Fry and Drew built in Ghana and Nigeria. Otto Königsberger worked in India from 1939 to 1951. Königsberger was chief architect in Mysore and later responsible for the design of the dwellings for refugees coming to India after the partition from Pakistan. In 1946 he designed pre-fabricated houses, and Minnette de Silva worked for him in Bangalore.
From 1951 onwards, Fry and Drew continued their work and became part of the planning committee in Chandigarh. Besides architects who had worked under colonial rule before, more and more European architects linked to CIAM were involved in the former colonial states. Through these experiences the former universalistic claim faced a crisis.
The main arguments concerning regional construction methods involved shortage of resources, climatic conditions, and financial limitations. In 1953 Gamma Grids on Morrocan bidonvilles and low-cost-housing in Chandigarh were presented at the CIAM Conference in Aix-en-Provence. According to Susanne Kohte, during the era of decolonization in the 1950s “the European and American architects’ associations were also becoming more international, with members from various continents. New questions were being raised, as can be seen in a 1947 letter from Sert to Giedion: ‘I think, we cannot continue to consider Central Europe as the main field of interest for CIAM.’”
Housing and planning was a major government interest at the time. While the combination of architecture and medicine was a segregation tool in colonial settlement planning, with tropical architecture it was revived as a scientific tool. (MH / CL)

Sources:
Home, Robert (1997): Of Planting and Planning. The making of British colonial cities. London: E & FN Spon, an imprint of Chapman & Hall.
Kohte, Susanne (2009): “Tropical Architecture” In: Archithese, Issue 6/2009. 66-71.
Tzonis, Alexander/Lefaivre, Liane/Stagno, Bruno (2001): Tropical Architecture. Critical Regionalism in the Age of Globalization. Chichester: Wiley-Academy.