Symposium Purpose

The purpose of this symposium is to support the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s School of Architecture in promoting the value of design and innovation and to promote a positive impact in the built and natural environments of Hawai’i and beyond. This symposium will sponsor design and innovation initiatives as a framework to address the challenges and opportunities facing Hawai’i and the global community. It will encourage dialogue, elicit ideas, and bring about inventive solutions to help shape a promising and sustainable future for Hawai’i’s Asia-Pacific Awards Program, UH Mānoa.

Overview

For many years the School of Architecture held a biennial symposium on Asia-Pacific architecture. This was the brainchild of former dean Ray Yeh. The symposia brought considerable attention to the school and attracted participants from throughout the region and the continental U.S. Since Ray’s time, the program has lapsed. The Tropical Modernism Symposium is a way of reintroducing the idea, although at a reduced scale but broader scope. The theme of this gathering is Tropical Modernism, with an emphasis on regional variations. Papers will cover the Tropical Architecture program at the AA in London, Modernism in Africa, the Near or Middle East and South Asia; and impacts on Southeast Asia, Australia, Hawaii, and the Americas.  A subtext is perhaps how quickly local designers and outsiders "localized" the architectural response to “place” and the environment. We anticipate a book as an outcome.

The principal sponsor is the Doin Kwon Endowment Fund, which is supporting the travel costs of international participants. These include scholars from throughout the globe who have written about the postwar period in architecture and major practitioners of the 1950s and 1960s.

Additional support comes from the Hawai‘i chapter of DOCOMOMO.

The event qualifies for 5 AIA/CES (HSW) LUs. The registered provider is AIA Honolulu. Attendees must attend all sessions to receive the credits.

Participants (committed)

Brazil

Ruth Verde Zein, Professor of Modern and Contemporary Architecture and Design at Mackenzie Presbyterian University in Sao Paulo, she has written numerous articles and over ten books on Brazilian and Latin American modern and contemporary architecture. She is the former coordinator of Docomomo-Brazil’s Sao Paulo Chapter.

Australia

Deborah van der Plaat, Senior Research Fellow, School of Architecture, The University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia. Author of Karl Langer: Modern Architect and Migrant in the Australian Tropics, London: Bloomsbury, co-edited with John Macarthur, 2023.

Africa

Wido Quist, Associate Professor, Delft University of Technology, and Secretary General DOCOMOMO International. Editor of Modernism in Africa (Birkhäuser, forthcoming) with Jan Haenraets, Andrew Saniga and Gulnur Cengiz.

Nana Biamah-Ofosu, Diploma Unit Tutor (Lecturer) at Architectural Association Lecturer, Department of Architecture and Landscape, Kingston University, London. Nana Biamah-Ofosu is an architect, writer, educator and curator. In addition to academia, she is the director of YAA Projects, an architecture practice exploring counter-histories, material cultures and diasporic experience through making, speaking, and writing architecture. Her practice focuses on the architecture and urbanism of African modernity, communality, domesticity, identity and geography through a diasporic and decolonial framework. Recent projects include Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Power in West Africa at the 18th Venice Biennale and at the V&A in London.

‍South East Asia

Johannes Widodo, Associate Professor Singapore National University, Director of the Tun Tan Cheng Lock Centre for Asian Architectural and Urban Heritage in Melaka (Malaysia), and Executive Editor of JSEAA (Journal of Southeast Asian Architecture) of the Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore guest editor of “South of Cancer: Modern Architecture’s Tropical Diasporas,” do.co,mo.mo Journal Number 63 (2020).

South Asia

Kazi Khaleed Ashraf, Bangladeshi architect, urbanist and architectural historian, author of An Architecture of Independence: The Making of Modern South Asia (New York: Architectural League of New York, 1998).

Mexico

Alberto Bolanos Casarin, graduate of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) and the Harvard GSD, with over ten years of experience in design practice and academia, focusing on the intersection between urban history, infrastructure and the role of architecture as a tool that recalibrates the anthropogenic management of the natural environment. 

Andres Salinas Popp, Mexican architect, graduate of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), creative director at The Traveling Beetle, and lecturer at UNAM, with a special interest in Mexican architectural heritage.

Middle East

James Steele, professor emeritus in the School of Architecture, University of Southern California, where he has taught courses on the history and theory of architecture and design. Prior to that he held a teaching position for ten years at the King Faisal (now Dammam) University near Dhahran in Saudi Arabia. He is the author of over 50 books, including An Architecture for People: The Complete Works of Hassan Fathy, Turkey: A Traveler's Historical and Architectural Guide, The Architecture of Rasem Badran: Narratives on People and Place, and Contemporary Japanese Architecture: Tracing the Next Generation.

Hawai'i

Dean Sakamoto, Principal, Sakamoto Architects, educator and practicing architect with a national presence and diverse local expertise. As an educator, he served on the faculties of Pratt Institute, Yale School of Architecture, Yale School of the Environment, and the University of Hawai'i Department of Urban and Regional Planning. Author of Hawaiian Modern: The Architecture of Vladimir Ossipoff (New Haven: Yale University Press, 20023). Dean presently serves as vice-president of DOCOMOMO US Hawai‘i Chapter.

Graham Hart, O‘ahu architect, co-founder of Kokomo Studio, and curator at the Ossipoff Cabin. Graham serves as president of DOCOMOMO US Hawai'i Chapter, co-chaired the 2019 National DOCOMOMO Symposium, and serves on the Hawai‘i Historic Places Review Board. He has taught as a Lecturer at University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s School of Architecture from 2018-2024.

Organizers

William Chapman, Dean of the School of Architecture, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Widely published in scholarly journals, he has also written on subjects ranging from plantation ruins in the U.S. Virgin Islands to the Wright Brothers National Memorial at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. His most recent publication is Architectural Conservation in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands (Routledge 2023).

Don Hibbard, former head of the Hawai‘i State Historic Preservation Office, first as an architectural historian and then as division administrator and Deputy SHPO. Two of his books, The View from Diamond Head, (Honolulu: Editions Limited, 1986), and Designing Paradise (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2006) consider the development of Hawai‘i’s visitor industry and architecture as a conveyor of history and a sense of place. He has also co-authored a book on Honolulu architect Hart Wood (2010), and authored Buildings of Hawai‘i (2011).

Tentative Schedule

March 29, 2025 (Saturday): 9:00 am-9:30 AM: Welcome/opening remarks

9:30 am-10:00 AM: Speaker 1

10:00 am-10:30 AM: Speaker 2

10:30-11:00 AM: Speaker 3

11:30-12:00 noon: Speaker 4

12:00 noon: Lunch

1:00 PM-1:30 PM: Speaker 5

1:30 pm-2:00 PM: Speaker 6

2:00 pm-2:30 PM: Speaker 7

2:30 PM-3:00 PM Speaker 8

3:00 PM-3:30 PM Speaker 9

3:30 PM-4:00 PM Speaker 10

4:00 PM-4:45 PM: Closing remarks

Concluding reception at the East-West Center

Sponsors

School of Architecture, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa

Doin Kwon Endowment Fund

Docomomo US/Hawaii Chapter

Fulbright Association of Hawaii

Contributing Organizations

Liljestrand Foundation

Historic Hawaii Foundation

Outcomes

The symposium will feature presentations followed by discussion among the participants. Talks will be approximately 20 minutes. Each presenter will provide a slide show and discussion of some aspect of “Tropical Modernism,” focusing largely on the post WWII-period. Over the next year we plan to gather papers based on the presentations and combine these with additional solicited papers to publish in book form.