Abstract
Reiterating conversations with my father, this paper retrieves a little known trajectory of tropical architecture to the Pacific and brings to light a Nigerian lineage to tropical modern buildings in Honiara, Solomon Islands. My father worked as an architect in the Public Works Department in 1950s Lagos, Nigeria, and 1960s Honiara, in the then British Solomon Islands Protectorate. The paper furthermore explores the agency of oral history in forming a nuanced narrative of modern architecture through the juxtaposition of the two different types of discourses: the discourse on tropical architecture, as reflected by my father's perspectives; and a postcolonial reading of colonial-modern architecture, as reflected by myself as the interviewer. The combination of these differing frameworks prompts a rich and nuanced reading of the buildings in Honiara. This oral history affirms tropical architecture's emphasis on climatic and technical factors as an intrinsic aspect of the colonial outlook of that time, while demonstrating that its political entanglements with colonialism and modernisation can only now be exposed through contemporary postcolonial perspectives: a frame which – in this paper – aligns more closely with the discourse of colonial-modern architecture. Finally, the paper explores – through my own filmmaking – the dialogical relationship between oral history and material evidence, thus exposing the contingent nature of colonial legacies and postcolonial realities present in tropical architecture in Solomon Islands.
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