As Hardly Found in the Art of Tropical Architecture

The exhibition will be open in the AA Gallery and Front Members Room Monday to Saturday, 11am - 7pm.

Following its establishment in 1953 at the Architectural Association in London (AA), the Department of Tropical Studies (DTS) exported climate-based architectural models of practice to countries in the Global South. These models were subsequently developed as the DTS reshaped architectural institutions and their curricula, regulated planning practice and legislation, and trained leading architects in and from the area. The bulk of the DTS’s archive within the AA consists of department director Otto Koenigsberger’s papers, encompassing 52 boxes of drawings, photographs, press cuttings, publications, letters, invoices, CVs, lectures and, mostly, piles of planning reports about the architecture of countries all over the Global South.

As a global institution operating from a neocolonial metropolis (where post-colonial control is exerted through economic, social, cultural, educational, religious, environmental, and other means) the AA inevitably presents a singular perspective within this archive, framed as it is by the papers of the DTS directors. As a result, the current DTS archive appears to be a coherent whole without much space for dissent. The real DTS archive could only ever exist as an exhaustive collection of papers from all those throughout the world whose hard work is hardly found in the archive, including the artists, architects, typists, graphic designers, masons, surveyors, and others who collaborated with DTS architects — who at times were excluded and at times rejected to be present.

This exhibition recentres their rich and diverse ecological approaches to the built environment through an ensemble of archival documents, fictional archival reconstructions, and artworks by Magda Cordell, Avinash Chandra, Bruce Onobrakpeya, Susanne Wenger, and others who worked with DTS architects. Finally, the exhibition includes commissions by artists Ato Jackson and Mariana Castillo Deball that explore hardly found marks in the archive as potential histories for alternative futures.

Private View: Thursday, 19 January 2023 from 6.30pm onwards, starting with As Hardly Found: A conversation with Ato Jackson, Mariana Castillo Deball, Debbie Meniru and Ella Mahalia Adu

An AA Members' exhibition tour will take place on 22 March 2023 from 6:30pm with curator Albert Brenchat-Aguilar and designer Ella Mahalia Adu. Sign up to attend.

You can read the exhibition guide online here.

As Hardly Found in the Art of Tropical Architecture is curated and coordinated by Albert Brenchat-Aguilar.

This exhibition is possible thanks to the kind support of the Architectural Association, the Bartlett School of Architecture’s Architecture Research Fund, the Henry Moore Foundation, the Graham Foundation, the Chase Doctoral Partnership at the Birkbeck School of Arts and the Architecture Space and Society Centre, the Elephant Trust, Fringe UCL, the Goethe Institut London, Conservation by Design.

Commissioned Artists: Mariana Castillo Deball and Ato Jackson.

AA Archives: Ed Bottoms and Amy Finn.

AA Public Programme and Exhibitions: Manijeh Verghese and Harriet Jennings.

Assistant Curator/Designer: Ella Mahalia Adu.

Advisors: Mark Crinson, Sally Stott and Pat Wakely.

With appreciation to so many whose comments and contributions have very much benefitted this proposal: Sabina Andron, Thandi Loewenson, Tamar Garb, Beatriz Conchado, Iain Jackson, Haim Yacobi, Michael Walls, Bea Gassmann de Sousa, Azadeh Zefarani, Gusti Merzeder-Taylor, Richard Saltoun, Sadie Sherman, Ayo Adeyinka, Alan Powers, Martina Amato, Hamed Khosravi, Nana Biamah-Ofosu, Annie-Marie Akussah, Ingrid Schroder, Chris Turner, Shumi Bose, the British Empire Study Group (Lucy Wang, Zannah Matson, Solmaz Mohammadzadeh Kive, Hannah Kaemmer, Thomas Aquilina, Aaron White, Oskar Arnorsson), and to so many others whose labour this exhibition builds upon.

Image: Still from ‘Action Painting, Body Planning’ by Albert Brenchat-Aguilar, work in progress for the exhibition ‘As Hardly Found in the Art of Tropical Architecture’, 2022