By Cleveland Salmon

John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Press

205 pages black & white drawings and photos

Review by Jeremy Irvine

Architectural Design For Tropical Regions
 

by Cleveland Salmon

Thinking of building a cottage in Jamaica? How about a museum in Australia, or a state building in Hawaii? Well, you'll need lots of shade, verandahs, and oh yes, a good book. Architect, Cleveland Salmon speaks from experience in his book Architectural Design For Tropical Regions. The book is designed as a handbook for building along the equator. Organized in three parts with a very concise table of contents Salmon makes it a perfect reference book for all of the questions and challenges designers might come across when designing comfortable spaces in warmer climates. The first part contains detailed descriptions of the architectural progressions of five locations. This gives the reader an overview of the precedencies set in this field of design, so that when they get to the other parts of the book where examples are given one can understand how a detail relates to the bigger picture. The second part gives an overview of all tropical climates, and some general suggestions for working in harmony with the environment. The third part gives specific guidelines for designing, and some very insightful case studies.
 

With global communication becoming easier, and travel faster, space and time are no longer obstacles. It is much easier now, than it might have been a hundred years ago for a designer to do work all over the world. The burden of a vernacular becomes much greater when one is not familiar with it. As time goes on this problem will only persist, and books such as this one will be more and more vital to designers. Salmon has provided a stepping stone for architects who want to broaden their horizons, but might be distressed with unfamiliar ground.
Salmon's confident words give the reader legs to stand unwavering at the edge of a millennium where the world waits only a few mouse clicks away, and phone lines out number humans. We are no longer nomads for whom shelter consists of the nearest cave, or some branches, mud, and grass. We have needs now that we didn't have a few hundred years ago, and designing in a vacuum is an option that becomes a hundred times less viable with every new invention. Salmon is aware of the newfound diversity in the architecture world, and with his book he is telling architects not to go blindly the way our ancestors did. He pays special attention to mistakes that made for odd environments, such as placing prefabricated English buildings in tropical regions.
 

This book is not essential to every architect however, it is essential to the
architect who is looking to the future, and the architect who wants to be
well versed in every vernacular. The world may be getting smaller, but at the same time it is becoming more diverse, and as it does books such as this one will become more important to have in one's library.

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