Tropical Modernism was Britain's unique contribution to International Modernism – a colonial architecture, developed by British architects Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry, against the background of anti-colonial struggle in India and West Africa in the late 1940s. This exhibition looks at the colonial origins of Tropical Modernism in British West Africa, and the survival of the style in the post-colonial period when it symbolised the independence and progressiveness of newly independent countries like India and Ghana.

Mfantsipim School, Cape Coast, by Fry, Drew & Partners, film still from 'Tropical Modernism: Architecture and Independence'. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London