The Concept of tropicality : it's relationship to culture and corresponding city form

Abstract

Architecture expresses itself through a language; the expression thus created reflects the attitudes of a particular social group. If in a tropical region if the buildings and city forms not reflect topicality they would not strengthen the identity of that society. If that happens, architecture would cause to loose the identity of that society. This study identifies the culture of tropical region and the manner they have been manifested in built environment and city forms. A study has been done to find whether the climate and the culture of a particular region have a relationship with each other. The correlation between the tropical climate to the tropical culture and the collective effect of the human behaviour and the social organization of the tropics, in this study is identified as the concept of Tropicality. The manifestation of Tropicality in selected tropical cultures will be studied in terms of the human behaviour of each climatic condition, built environment and the city form. It analyses the cultural imperatives which underpinned the ways of thinking of tropical region and thus identifies the corresponding city form came from these attitudes by analyzing selected sub climatic conditions of the tropical region and their built environment and city form. The manifestation of Tropicality in the Sri Lankan context will be studied by analysing three contemporary city forms of Sri Lanka and their historical development.