When European modernism was pioneered by architects like Le Corbusier and Walter Gropius in the 1920s and ’30s, the movement was all about clean lines, flat roofs and glass, glass, glass. But what happened when this aesthetic was transported into a hot, humid climate? After the Second World War there was a big British budget for shiny, new public builds overseas, in a bid to placate independence-seeking nations such as India and Ghana. Modernism had to pivot. The result was tropical modernism.