What’s Happening: The good, the bad, and the ugly of Tropical Modernism comes into view in a new exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, which shows how countries like India and Ghana adopted the midcentury style as a symbol of modernity and progress.

The Download: In the mid-20th century, British architects Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry embraced the idea that Modernism could forge a utopian path forward as the world entered a period marked by post-war modernization and decolonization. The couple’s tradition-rejecting vision failed to convince conservative Brits about the merits of concrete and glass, so they seized the opportunity to put their principles into practice in West Africa, which was growing restless under British rule. To placate calls for independence, the government enlisted the duo to design public projects—community centers, educational buildings—that employed the same principles as clean-lined Modernism but adapted for hot and humid climates. A style called “Tropical Modernism” was born, yielding buildings marked by brise soleils, adjustable louvers, and wide eaves that provide passive cooling while maximizing shade and ventilation.

The reality of Tropical Modernism, as a new show at the Victoria & Albert Museum suggests, is thornier. “The tropics” encompass around 40 percent of the world’s surface, but one of the nascent aesthetic’s key tenets was that “the same architectural language could be applied everywhere,” as David Robson, a former professor who published a book about Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa, once told Surface. Fry and Drew dismissed West African building traditions in favor of their own ideas, which often made superficial nods to regional symbols. The perforations in a Ghanaian school’s brise soleils that reference the crescent shape of an Ashanti stool may have charmed students there, but likely wouldn’t be as welcome in Sri Lanka, where Bawa abandoned Tropical Modernism altogether. He instead pioneered a vernacular that fused colonial and Indigenous styles specific to the nation’s own climate and design legacies.

Tropical Modernism was also taking hold in Chandigarh, the new capital city ordained for the Indian state of Punjab, where Le Corbusier designed a group of government buildings. The French architect banned cows and informal markets, essential features of most Indian cities, leading architect and scholar Aditya Prakash to decry his buildings as “a place for gods to play, not for humans.” While flawed, they laid the foundation for homegrown architects like Ghana’s John Owusu Addo and India’s Balkrishna Doshi to adapt Tropical Modernism’s devices and create spaces that feel endemic to their locales. The heyday of Tropical Modernism was short-lived as open facades that facilitated cross-ventilation would soon be rendered obsolete by air conditioning—and now its future is imperiled by redevelopment.

In Their Own Words: “A building from Ghana must show the evidence that it’s Ghanaian because it is from within the context of Ghana—the people’s culture, the economy, the circumstances might be reflected in the buildings,” Professor Henry Wellington, former Head of the Department of Architecture at Ghana’s Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, told the V&A Museum. “All these things have very deep psychological and spiritual significance, which the British architects didn’t take time to understand.”

Surface Says: As architects are called on to address climate change, there’s ample wisdom to glean from Tropical Modernism’s principles of passive cooling—let’s just hope they take a more sensitive approach than their predecessors.

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On March 13, the Wiggle Room (9 Avenue A, New York) will host a benefit anniversary celebration for the Tom of Finland Foundation. The foundation is named for the late illustrator Touko Valio Laaksonen, who worked under the pseudonym to create a signature style of homoerotic art that became a cornerstone of gay culture. Forty years after its inception, the Tom of Finland Foundation continues to play a pivotal role in championing the erotic arts and their place in history.

Surface readers are invited to “wiggle and shake” their way to the party, which will be DJ’d by Silvia Prada and Boyyyish. Can’t make it? You can still donate.

The richness of American botany has long inspired the perfumers at Xinú, the Mexican fragrance brand whose lineup of avant-garde scents evokes everything from agave leaves to dried tobacco. Their latest boutique, envisioned by previous collaborators Esrawe Studio and Cadena Concepts, creates somewhat of a sanctuary in the heart of Mexico City’s bustling Juarez neighborhood.

Nestled within a lushly landscaped garden that formerly housed a car repair shop, a rounded wooden pavilion first beckons visitors through a verdant pathway before embarking on a sensory journey inside. Scents, candles, incense, home products, and other displays reveal the craft embedded in Xinú’s approach to the olfactory arts; soaring windows bring a vivid tapestry of the garden inside, a transformative effect that frees one’s mind to embrace the botanical realm.

The latest pursuit from Coach creative director Stuart Vevers isn’t a new collection, but a restaurant and coffee shop designed in collaboration with Studio Sofield. Despite the unexpected location, both concepts are rooted firmly in the label’s New York City origins. The coffee shop’s interiors draw from the diners that have all but disappeared from the streets of Manhattan. A stainless steel pastry case holds dessert pies and pizzas, and a soft serve station offers visitors a sweet treat to enjoy while shopping at the Coach boutique just outside.

The restaurant channels a kind of surreal vision of erstwhile Americana with a vintage taxi suspended above the dining room and the kind of white tablecloth and bone china dinner service that patrons of the city’s bygone power-lunching scene would likely be well familiar with. The menu takes more than a few cues from the city’s status steakhouses, offering throwbacks like seafood towers and oysters Rockefeller with wagyu strip steak and no fewer than six martinis. For dessert, order a handbag tableside to savor for long after the meal.

Matt McKay’s firm may be on the younger side, but the New York City interior designer and travel enthusiast’s range reaches far beyond his years—take ambitious projects like ground-up oceanside estates and classic Fifth Avenue apartments as proof. His latest endeavor is an eclectic range of furniture that distills the traditional and modern sensibilities of his practice onto a smaller scale, yielding personality-packed pieces whose offbeat features both delight and stay imprinted in one’s memory.

It’s a remarkable feat to stand out from the crowd of galleries lining Chelsea’s gallery district, but Flag Art Foundation’s winter lineup has achieved just that with exhibitions featuring Graham Little, Ian Mwesiga, Tschabalala Self, and Faith Ringgold. Flag’s current season opened on Feb. 23, and marked both Little and Mwesiga’s inaugural solo shows in the United States. Scottish artist Little’s self-titled show reveals 16 gouache and colored pencil works that radiate a quiet and uncanny mystery. With “Beyond the Edge of the World,” Uganda-born Mwesiga, meanwhile, shows 11 striking oil paintings whose atmospheric landscapes all seem to be connected by eerily poignant shades of blue.

The foundation’s Spotlight series positions Self’s Hear No composition in dialogue with Faith Ringgold’s Coming to Jones Road Part 2 #2: We Here Aunt Emmy Got Us Now. Self’s work captures a Black feminine figure made of textiles mid-stride against a painted background that evokes West African Batik textiles. Ringgold’s powerfully confrontational acrylic, fabric, and text depiction of emancipated people celebrating the end of enslavement tops off a can’t-miss exhibition season at the nonprofit.

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Studio PCH is a creative studio located in Venice, California, that designs warm, exciting, and sophisticated spaces, with a focus on high-end hospitality. Encompassing both architectural and interior design, Studio PCH has completed recent projects such as Nobu Los Cabos, which was shortlisted for a World Architecture Festival award.

Surface Says: This California-based studio, led by French architect Severine Tatangelo, continues to bring the characteristics of home to hotels, restaurants, and commercial spaces.

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