The Verandah between Climate Determinism and Climate Consciousness

Abstract

This article explores the architectural typology of the verandah by following its use in residential buildings during the post-Ottoman British colonization and Independence periods in Sudan and differentiating between the concepts of climate determinism and climate consciousness. It brings new archival family photographs and fieldwork to discuss a modern Sudan that is curiously absent from the scholarship of both African and Islamic architecture in order to write the global history of modernism in higher resolution. It shows that the verandah was a British colonial architectural device in the context of a distinct town planning strategy, conceived after the racist segregation of “white men” from “natives” and used for cooling purposes for the sake of colonizers’ comfort in perceived tropical climates. Comparing Abdel Moneim Mustafa’s designs to those of colonial architects such as Gordon Brock Bridgman and independence-era architects such as Peter Muller, the article defines climate consciousness as a position that resists colonial inequalities of climate determinism but does not reject international connections and the modern know-how of climatization. It shows that the colonial connotations of the verandah were transformed after Sudanese independence, thanks to its creative use by architects who critically employed the technical know-how progressed under the field of tropical architecture. The article identifies this approach as the search for a more equitable internationalism that struggled for self-determination in order to undo the domination of global empires but not foreclose cosmopolitanism.