Emotional Architecture vs Tropical Modernism
情感の建築 / トロピカル・モダニズム
Both sit in Modern Architecture, so the question is not what they belong to but how they behave. They are reached for with some of the same intent, which is where they get confused.
Emotional Architecture
Building that raises unbroken walls as sculptural mass and works on feeling through color, direct sun and stillness alone. Goeritz gave it the name in the 1953 manifesto he wrote for El Eco, against the functionalism of his day.
Tropical Modernism
Adapts modern architecture to hot, humid climates through canopies, louvers, ventilation and sun control.
| Emotional Architecture | Tropical Modernism | |
|---|---|---|
| Era | 1953- | 1940s–1970s |
| Family | Modern Architecture | Modern Architecture |
| Kind | Style | Style |
| Cues | A single large wall left without windows / Surfaces painted through in one flat color / Planes of shadow cast by direct sun / Mass read as sculpture rather than as building | Brise-soleil / Deep eaves / Cross-ventilation / Permeable screens |
| Best used for | Giving a white modern building strong feeling through local color and light · Making stillness in a hot climate house with courtyards and water | Schools and civic buildings in hot humid places that must work without air conditioning. · Coastal houses and lodges where airflow sets the shape of the plan. |
| Type | Sink signage into the wall color and let shadow make it readable | Place signs in the shade of the eaves so glare never blanks them. |
| Composition | Close the outside with thick walls, opening only to courtyard and water | Keep rooms shallow and open on both sides so air crosses through. |
| Material | Rough plaster in one vivid color, with the hour's light calculated in | Concrete louvers, perforated terracotta blocks, timber shutters that breathe. |
| Caution | Painting walls in vivid color without designing openings and shadow makes the color glare evenly, giving loudness instead of the intended stillness. | Louvers and canopies added as shapes, with no calculation of orientation and sun angles, stop neither sun nor rain. Look past a tropical look to colonial rule, nation building after independence and local architects. |