Jane Drew was the senior partner, with her husband Maxwell Fry, of the practice that codified Tropical Modernism — a way of building for hot, humid climates in which the concrete frame is opened up with deep eaves, adjustable louvres, brise-soleil screens and cross-ventilation instead of being sealed and cooled. She worked in British West Africa from 1946, first as an assistant town-planning adviser to the colonial government of the Gold Coast, and the firm's Ghanaian and Nigerian schools, colleges and university campuses of the 1940s and 1950s are her most consequential body of work. She and Fry later brought Le Corbusier to Chandigarh, and designed housing and schools there. Her practice was based in London; the West African work was colonial commissioning, and is contested for it.
