Preamble From tropical coolers and batiks, to the prospect of economic prosperity, the collective image of the tropics has evolved. The tropics have always been extolled through certain tropes. In literary works such as George Orwell’s Burmese Days, the tropics is presented to readers as an extreme environment, with certain remnants of neocolonial stereotypes described through visceral use of language. Words such as hot, stuffy and wild are not uncommon, suggesting a condition of the tropics that warrants its own phenomenology. The spatial geography of the tropics, as described by Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, spans the region of the tropics extending beyond the equatorial belt with the hot and humid regions. In recent times, the image of the tropics is one of the green metropole, brimming with seeming productivity - part of the larger network of the market economy. Wherein the tropics was once envisaged as a site of fetish, it now becomes the site of the fiscal. The colonial project is no longer a domain singularly expounded by the West. Through the spread of capital and the promise or chance of prosperity, China has effectively strongarmed nation states in a bid to harness the One Belt One Road agenda. This is usually carried out strategically through a prospective collaboration where the Chinese government would project a country’s success through a series of infrastructure projects that would be funded by them. These projects, often times are based on weak premises or solely serving the New Silk Road agenda and therefore, failing to generate any revenue. Consequently, the borrowing nation state falls into debt trap and becomes subservient to the economic demands of China. The ubiquity of certain architectural technology has proliferated the built environments of thick and dense cities. This normalcy is even more apparent in large urban areas that are directly complicit to the forces of the market- one might argue that the metropolitan condition is therefore a participant in the market economy. Shiny steel glass skyscrapers are made of these.
Meanwhile, all along, the legacy of building in the tropics has left a robust architectural language that has been deployed effectively over the years. The second rhetoric would be, can and should the language of the tropical project infiltrate the way this new development in Colombo is conceived? Across the island, almost half of currently commissioned projects are Chinese funded endeavours. The head honcho, Chinese Communications Company, from the beginning of the One Belt One Road Initiative has had a huge stake in these projects both in its construction timeline, and the operations of eventual buildings. The Sri Lankans, on the other hand have had to catch up with the speed of the development of the city. The rich architectural legacy of Bawa and his colleagues warrant a kind of patience in crafting a building. Elements of buildings are crafted, master builders in constant conversation with the architect making the practice of architecture a slow one. In the meantime, developments of the city has left behind this domain of architecture that requires excess capital and time, and hence the rise of urban vernacular shells and buildings designed and built by the state and the everyday bass.
5