Comfort, violence, care: decolonising tropical architecture at Blida, 1956

Abstract

Uncomfortable histories Late 1956. Doctor Frantz Fanon has resigned from his post at the psychiatric hospital at Blida-Joinville in Algeria. The Gold Coast is a year away from independence. Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew, back in London from West Africa, and before that Chandigarh, are publishing a manual called Tropical Architecture in the Humid Zone: In Bogota, a Pan-American network of planners and housing consultants is coalescing to support the usa’s interests in Latin America. Fidel Castro l...