Tropical Modernism review – a complex story of power, freedom, craft… and cows

V&A, London
Modernist architecture’s arrival in India and colonial west Africa, and how, post-independence, a new generation of local architects made the style their own, is explored in an intriguing new exhibitionIn Chandigarh, northern India, in 1957, a road inspector called Nek Chand started building a fantasy world, alone and with his bare hands, in a secluded wooded area. He constructed palaces and waterfalls and an evocation of his home village in what was now Pakistan, from whic