• 1 The Tinplate Bungalow was photographed on January 29, 2021 during a site visit to Jamshedpur as pa (...)

1The recent photograph which opens this paper shows the upper part of the entrance porch of a so-called Tinplate Bungalow, a single-story structure in Tinplate Township, Golmuri in Jamshedpur, India (fig. 1).1 Taken from just above a scaffolding, while the bungalow was undergoing repair works, the image shows all the parts of the rather mundane, or even banal, architectural elements of this porch: a roof slab supported by lintels and piers on two sides, and by the outside walls of the bungalow itself on the other two. Because the layer of plaster that originally covered the whole structure is largely missing, the reinforcement bars between the bricks in the roof slab (which seems to be floating) and lintels are now revealed. This X-ray view suggests that what we are looking at is, in fact, an application of reinforced brickwork, a technology which came into use in the architecture and construction industry in early 20^th-century India.

• 2 William J.R. Curtis’s survey Modern Architecture since 1900—the latest revised edition dates from (...)
• 3 Peter Scriver and Vikramaditya Prakash, India, London: Reaktion Books Ltd., 2015 (Modern Architect (...)
• 4 Peter Scriver and Vikramaditya Prakash, Colonial Modernities: Building, Dwelling and Architecture (...)
• 5 In Bombay, one can think of the Mistri family's enterprises and architect G.B, Mhatre, for instanc (...)
• 6 William Glover, “Making Indian Modern Architects,” in Mrinalini Rajagopalan and Madhuri Desai (eds (...)

2In historiography, Indian architectural modernity has long been conflated with the use of concrete and its iconography, as exemplified by the buildings of Chandigarh. Consequently, the 1950s have been treated as the birth of a “modern” India.2 Photographs of the construction site of Chandigarh, that were being circulated in reputed architecture magazines of the period like Architectural Review, show how, against the backdrop of a predominantly rural and pre-industrial past, Nehru’s idea of a modern city was taking shape, in terms of material, technology, and architectural aesthetic—all crystallized in its iconic buildings. Yet, during the last two decades another strand of scholarship on 20^th-century architecture in India has emerged, fundamentally broadening our gaze. In particular, the 2015 survey book on India co-authored by Peter Scriver and Amit Srivastava in the series Modern Architectures in History discusses the idea of modernity in India through an articulation of more local modernities.3 Also, earlier investigations of colonial architecture by scholars like Peter Scriver, Vikramaditya Prakash, and Preeti Chopra have made a case for questioning overly simplistic dichotomies such as “West” versus “non-West,” or “modern” versus “traditional.” They demand attention to the existence of “multiple” and even “indigenous” modernities.4 Researchers focusing on the emergence of the professional architect in India and the related shifts in practice have argued that in the last decades of the 19^th and the first decades of the 20^th century, an era in which the figure of the “modern” architect/engineer emerged, traditional Indian master-builders (mistris) never entirely went away, with some (descendants) of the latter obtaining professional qualifications.5 William Glover, for instance, has argued that it makes little sense to see the two types of practice as separate fields of activity: rather, they co-existed and were perhaps more entangled than was previously believed: at times, they converged.6

• 7 Since the studio took place during the Covid pandemic, it was primarily online. That made accessin (...)

3In this paper, I suggest that one may investigate the intricate relationship between “modern” versus “traditional” in a banal element of ordinary early 20^th-century housing in India, such as the porch of the Tinplate Bungalow, just as well as if one were to focus on landmark edifices. More precisely, I argue that such investigation of “small,” or even “gray” architecture requires, first, paying attention to aspects of materiality and construction method. In other words, the building must be analyzed as evidence. Second, one must browse a wide array of other source materials. In the present case, these range from publications on building materials and construction from the early 1900s to 1940s (technical reports on reinforced brick technology, architecture, and building manuals) to company magazines (TISCO Review), and scholarly work on Jamshedpur.7 By interweaving the empirical observations of the material evidence with a reading of other source material, I seek to provide a basic understanding of how knowledge of specific, less spectacular, and somewhat everyday construction methods circulated across the networks of both colonial engineers and Indian master builders. In this respect, this paper makes a case for bringing a construction history perspective to the study of 20^th-century Indian architecture. This paper should be understood not as completed research providing in-depth answers, but rather as an initial exploration of the theme, pointing out the relevance of source material that often has not yet received the attention it deserves.

• 8 Jamshedpur is currently an important city in the state of Jharkhand, India. However, prior to the (...)
• 9 Tinplate is a high-quality steel-based material. The prospect of establishing a tinplate industry (...)

4The Tinplate Bungalow, a single-story structure, is one of the bungalow types found in Tinplate Township, Golmuri, in Jamshedpur.8 The name “Tinplate Bungalow” refers not to the use of tinplate as a material in the bungalow, but to the tinplate industry established in the company town: the Tinplate Company of India Limited, formed as a joint venture between the Tata Steel Company, the Burma Oil Company, and Shaw Wallace and Company at Golmuri in 1920.9

• 10 I have referred to the political territories, such as Mayurbhanj, as they were known in the early (...)
• 11 For a detailed study and further reading on the series of events leading up to the establishment o (...)
• 12 The name Jamshedpur was given by the then Viceroy of British India, Lord Chelmsford, when he visit (...)

5Jamshedpur, in the eastern part of British-controlled India, was conceived as an industrial town by the Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO), established in 1907. Mr. P.N. Bose, the geologist for the state of Mayurbhanj, one of the former princely states of British India, discovered a large region of deposits of high-grade hematite iron ore.10 This discovery, close to the coal fields of Raniganj and Jharia, led to the search for a suitable site to set up the steelworks. Finally, a small village called Sakchi was chosen as the site where the Tata Iron and Steel Company was set up between 1907 and 1908. Over the next few years, Jamshedpur grew into a company town.11 Today, the city is eponymous with the pioneer industrialist who founded the Tata Group, Jamsetji Tata.12

• 13 In 1902, Jamsetji Tata had travelled to industrial areas in the United States and Europe to get ac (...)
• 14 The climate of Jamshedpur is characterized by heavy rainfall and intensely hot summers. The flora (...)
• 15 As seen in fig. 4, there was a division between the Indian Town and European Town. These demarcate (...)

7Once the area became a company town, it was quickly dotted with bungalows, clubs, and various institutions that are now reminders of Jamshedpur’s cosmopolitan past and the corporation’s influence. Together, they constitute a landscape different from its rural surroundings. In the initial years of its founding, the Company sought the expertise of consultants from America, Germany, and other parts of Europe and America.13 They were hired primarily as managers and supervisors of the Company’s works. This inflow of “covenanted” employees required suitable accommodation in the harsh tropical climate of Jamshedpur.14 Thus, a familiar housing typology, known as the bungalow, assumed to provide bodily comfort, started to be constructed in what is now known as the Northern Town.15

• 16 Maya Dutta, Jamshedpur, op. cit. (note 9), p. 97.
• 17 Ibid.
• 18 Dutta also notes that the housing policy of the Tinplate Company was counter to that of the genera (...)
• 19 These include not just the Tinplate Bungalows but also the bungalows of TISCO and other associated (...)
• 20 For a detailed study on the establishment of the Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO), see Mircea R (...)

8These bungalows were built to house the technicians and skilled workers who had migrated from Gary, Indiana and Wales in the United Kingdom to be employed in the Company works.16 Since it was to be populated with individuals from Europe and America, the area where the bungalows were to be built was planned as the European Town (fig. 4). As newer Tata enterprises such as Tata Electrical and Locomotive Company (Telco) entered the market, existing bungalow areas were extended to accommodate the bungalows of these newer companies, resulting in other bungalow clusters such as the Telco Bungalows.17 The bungalows of the Tinplate Company were completed by 1924 and the main thoroughfare, Golmuri Road, was by this time flanked by 49 other bungalows and high-rental quarters for senior executives of the firm.18 Interestingly, many of these early 20th-century bungalows remain in use and are even being renovated, like the Tinplate Bungalow that is the subject of this study.19 As they often still house employees of what is today the Tata Iron and Steel Company (TISCO),20 the company’s archive holds interesting source material for an investigation of this particular, early 20^th-century housing typology.

• 21 For information on the studio, see footnote 1.

9The research from which this paper stems was initiated during an architectural history and theory master’s studio which took place during the Covid pandemic. As a result, it was impossible for the author to go on site.21 A key challenge was therefore to reconstruct a detailed model of the Tinplate Bungalow on the basis of scattered information collected by those studio participants who had been able to visit the bungalow. This included some photographs of the interior and exterior, sketches, and estimated measurements from the site.

• 22 It is to be noted that the C1 Type TISCO bungalow is the only type that is a two-story structure i (...)
• 23 The exact years of their construction are not known. The years indicate the period during which th (...)

11When we compare the reconstructed floorplan of the Tinplate Bungalow with those of the two TISCO bungalows,22 we note that the Tinplate Bungalow has some distinctive features. It covers an area of about 172 square meters, whereas the two TISCO bungalows, namely the D Type, built between 1909 and 1919,23 and the C1 Type, built between 1917 and 1919, cover 187 and 482 square meters, respectively (fig. 5). Also, their interior distribution differs significantly: the porch of the Tinplate Bungalow (see grey highlight) connects directly only to the living room and the dining room and is a relatively small space. In the case of the D Type TISCO bungalow, the depth of the porch (see grey highlight) is comparable to that of Tinplate. However, in terms of the overall scale of the space, it is bigger. The D Type also has a veranda at the rear. This porch and the veranda both connect directly to a series of rooms that are organized linearly. Similarly, in the C1 type TISCO bungalow, the entrance porch (see grey highlight) has an angular form unlike the rectangular form of the D Type and Tinplate Bungalows. This type also has an additional veranda in the rear. The layout also follows a linear pattern similar to that of the D Type. In terms of overall spatial organization, the rooms in the Tinplate Bungalow are more clustered and compartmentalized, compared to the other examples of TISCO bungalows. In terms of area, the porch of the Tinplate Bungalow covers about 12 square meters, while in the two TISCO bungalows, that of the C1 Type is almost twice as big (about 23 square meters) and the D Type almost three times (about 39 square meters) that size. The two TISCO bungalows these have additional spaces like the veranda at the rear.

• 24 Frederick Charles Temple was engaged as the Chief Town Engineer by the Company and in 1919, he pro (...)
• 25 F.C. Temple, Report on Town Planning, Jamshedpur: Commercial Press, Fort, Bombay, November 1919, J (...)

13Due to its modest size, the porch of the Tinplate Bungalow would offer a place for the family to relax, but would likely be insufficient to accommodate larger gatherings for social functions. Therefore, it predominantly serves as an entrance porch. Not only do we see a relatively smaller porch in the Tinplate Bungalow but also the omission of the additional veranda (as seen in the two TISCO bungalows) in its architectural layout. One possible reason could be drawn from F.C. Temple’s Report on Town Planning (1919).24 Regarding the size of the plot available for each bungalow, he mentions in the section on housing that before the early 1920s, some of the finest houses were built on plots measuring one to one and a half acres. He proposed a plan that reduced this to a quarter-acre. He further suggests that if any bungalows were required to have larger areas, then two or more plots could be allotted and, in some instances, “the nature of the ground made it convenient to allow half an acre or even more.”25 Therefore, the overall scale of the pre-war (TISCO) and post-war (Tinplate) bungalows may possibly differ because of the available plot area. Nonetheless, the Tinplate Bungalow appears to be a more individualized project, at least in terms of its architecture, indicating a desire to distinguish this set of bungalows from the TISCO bungalows.

• 26 Gauri Bharat, “Reframing Colonial Technologies: Reinforced Brickwork in Early Twentieth-Century In (...)

18Analysis of the fieldwork photographs of the porch of the Tinplate Bungalow suggests that the structure made use of a reinforced brickwork flat slab. Initial insight of the structural principles of such slabs was gained from earlier research conducted by one of the master's studio supervisors, Dr. Gauri Bharat, as well as from some early 20^th-century technical manuals, discussed in more detail below.26 Reinforced brickwork slabs can consist of one course of brick with cross reinforcement in the form of bars, although most often they have two or more. Here, the bars are visible between the mortar joints on the soffit. A cast chajja (overhanging eave) is topped by brick coping, and a layer of bituminous felt seals the roof for the purpose of waterproofing (fig. 8). The cross reinforcement in the soffit behaves structurally to counter the tensile stresses developed in the slab, which are then transferred through the reinforced brick lintel and brick piers. The reinforcement rods are placed near the lower surface of the slab, likely because in a freely supported slab such as this, the tensile stresses would develop in the lower section of the bricks. The reinforcement embedded in the mortar joints with the brick enables the slab to function as a homogeneous mass, providing further structural stability.

• 27 Surkhi is the powdered form of over-burned bricks or clays.

20Similarly, a closer look at the lintels of the porch might help to get a sense of another mode of the reinforced brickwork applied in the Tinplate Bungalow (fig. 9). From the 3D-reconstruction discussed above, it can be deduced that the depth of the lintel is 450 mm and that it has been vertically reinforced using stirrups seen in the mortar joints. However, from the site photographs, it is difficult to ascertain whether there is any horizontal reinforcement between the mortar joints. Information gathered through interviews and the technical manuals points at an important aspect of the method not addressed so far: the area where reinforcement has been used would have normally had to utilize cement mortar instead of lime surkhi,27 the traditional bonding material, because lime surkhi would corrode the reinforcement.

• 28 Mehul. Shah, personal communication, February 26, 2021. Professor Mehul Shah is a Civil Engineer a (...)

21The depth of the lintel and the type of reinforcement depend, of course, upon the span of the opening.28 In the Tinplate Bungalow that was studied, no specific lintel details of the other openings, such as the windows, were visible. Based on the measurements, however, it is clear that the lintels of the porch differ significantly from window lintels in terms of span: the 3D-reconstruction suggest that the maximum span of the porch lintels is about 2.5 meters, while the period photograph of Durell’s 1922 bungalow mentioned above indicates that porch lintel spans can even be larger, up to 2.8 and 3 meters.

• 29 Henry Robinson Luce, “The House of Tata,” Fortune, vol. 29, no. 1, 1930, p. 101-105. Also see Maya (...)

25Considering the periods of construction of the bungalows in Jamshedpur, a significant shift from jack arches to reinforced brick solutions can be primarily observed towards the end of the First World War and the early 1920s. It coincides with the moments of expansion and diversification being planned by TISCO. During the First World War, TISCO was the only supplier of steel in India. A considerable amount of steel was supplied by TISCO to the British Empire for the war, and shipped to Mesopotamia, Egypt, Palestine and East Africa.29 This diversion of steel for war efforts meant that less steel was available for construction projects. Heavy steel girders might have been replaced by thinner sections of steel rods. Therefore, wartime steel shortages offer one possibility for the choice of reinforced brick for the Tinplate Bungalow. A reinforced brick slab uses significantly less steel compared to a jack arch roof.

• 30 One of the authors of a technical report noted that, in terms of aesthetic appeal, a reinforced br (...)

26In terms of structure, the shift from pre-war jack arches to postwar reinforced brickwork in Jamshedpur suggests the undertaking of a certain risk. This is because, in the case of the jack arch, we know that the arch is made solely out of bricks and supported on steel girders. The behavior of the jack arch system and questions of structural performance and stability are, in fact, far more predictable than in a complex system like reinforced brickwork. Yet, in terms of spatial coherence, the flat ceiling made possible by the use of a reinforced brick slab has a certain advantage over the jack arch system, which inevitably introduces a primary spatial direction and a rhythm in the room, because of the repetitive nature of its structural elements. With a reinforced brickwork slab, an evenly plastered ceiling is achieved at a lower cost. In that sense, the porch of the Tinplate Bungalow offered a good opportunity to experiment: the flat soffit and straight lintels suited the interwar modernist styling of the bungalow.30

• 31 Gauri Bharat, “Reframing Colonial Technologies,” op. cit. (note 27).
• 32 The Kleine flooring system was used, among others, in the Mercantile Bank Building in Madras and i (...)
• 33 Gauri Bharat, “Reframing Colonial Technologies,” op. cit. (note 27).

27While the conjectured sequence of construction for laying the reinforced brick slab in the Tinplate Bungalow’s porch as described above appears to be simple, there are noteworthy differences when comparing this system with other techniques of laying a reinforced brick slab. Gauri Bharat pointed this out in a 2022 article entitled “Reframing Colonial Technologies: Reinforced Brickwork in Early Twentieth-Century India.”31 More in particular, Bharat compared what appeared to be a relatively simple laying of the reinforced brickwork slab she observed in a shop in Jamshedpur with the more sophisticated technique of the Kleine flooring system, a patented flooring system practiced in Germany since 1892 and introduced in India in the first two decades of the 20^th century.32 On the basis of her analysis, Bharat argues that the system we encounter in Jameshedpur should not be understood as a “simple case of poor or inadequate design,” but rather, when we take local conditions of construction and labor into account, as a “local,” “indigenous” adaptation of the Kleine system that could be executed by unskilled labor. The Kleine flooring system indeed required great precision in its execution. Since reinforced concrete was not yet a standard practice in Jamshedpur, the adoption and adaptation of reinforced brickwork technology to create porches such as the one in the Tinplate Bungalow suggests a structural ingenuity and material improvisation suited for such a space. As such, the distinction between the Jameshedpur application of the reinforced brickwork slab and the Kleine system not only provokes questions of efficiency in tackling compressive and tensile stresses in roof and floor slabs, but, more importantly, points at particular adaptations of the same system across different construction contexts. “Decoding such details […]”, Bharat contends, “opens up new historiographic possibilities for colonial and South Asian architectural history.”33

• 34 William Glover, “Making Indian Modern Architects,” op. cit. (note 7) ; Pedro Guedes, “Tropical bui (...)

28But how specific to Jamshedpur was this reinforced brickwork method? Can it be traced in building parts other than the porches of these bungalows? Should it really be considered a “local,” “indigenous” adaptation of an imported building method, as Bharat suggests? I approached these questions by consulting yet another source material: early 20^th-century technical publications and building manuals. These publications have already attracted the attention of some architectural historians such as William Glover, but also of scholars working at the intersection of architectural and construction history, like Pedro Guedes and Sarah Melsens.34 Such documents present how reinforced brickwork as a technique featured in the Indian subcontinent during the early 20^th century.

• 35 E. Stokes-Roberts, “A New System of Reinforced Brickwork as Applied to Above-ground Cylindrical Wa (...)
• 36 A. Brebner, Notes on Reinforced Brickwork, op. cit. (note 27), p. 1.

29The first trace of reinforced brickwork in the subcontinent appears to be the construction of an above-ground water tank of an ordnance factory in Coonoor, Tamil Nadu, in what was then the Madras Presidency in southern India around 1902. It was designed by Captain Stokes-Roberts, a military engineer, who documented the use of reinforced brickwork in building elements such as parapet walls, water tanks, and racquet courts in his reports. For instance, in the case of the water tank, he mentions the use of reinforcement in the form of bars and telegraph wires used to horizontally strengthen the structure. Another is of vertical reinforcement in the parapet walls of various footbridges at the Cordite Factory in Coonoor.35 A 1922 technical report by Scottish civil engineer Alexander Brebner details the structural design of reinforced brickwork slabs, beams, and cantilevers, and reports on economical and structural successes of experiments at Patna. It suggests the earliest use of reinforced brickwork slabs was in the buildings of the New Capital of Bihar and Orissa at Patna (1912-19) where Brebner was at the time Executive Engineer of the Public Works Department (PWD). By the time Brebner published his report in 1922 he wrote that whereas “lintels over ordinary door and window openings” had been applied “for some years”, the extensive use of reinforced brickwork in floors, roofs, staircases, etc. was of more recent date.36

• 37 A. Brebner, Notes on Reinforced Brickwork, op. cit. (note 27), p. 2.

30Brebner mentions how the technique was being adopted for other important colonial buildings as well, both public and private: the Government House, Secretariats, and permanent residences for officials of the Government of India at New Delhi; the Hindu University at Benares; the Cotton Mills and Improvement Trust at Cawnpore; and the “buildings in the new town being constructed by the Tata Iron and Steel Company Limited at Jamshedpur” to name a few.37 Therefore, by the time of its construction in the early 1920s the reinforced brick slab of the Tinplate Bungalow had already been preceded by experiments at Patna during World War I. It was built contemporaneously with various other important projects that employed reinforced brickwork as a spanning system.

• 38 William Glover, “Making Indian Modern Architects,” op. cit. (note 7), p. 35-40.
• 39 B.P.L. Bedi, Harvest From The Desert: The Life and Work of Sir Ganga Ram, Lahore: Sir Ganga Ram Tr (...)
• 40 Ganga Ram Rai Bahadur, The Pocket Book of Engineering, op. cit. (note 27), Preface.
• 41 Ibid., p. 334-354.

31More details on the reinforced brickwork system used for the Hindu University building at Benares feature in the 5^th edition of the Pocket Book of Engineering by Sir Ganga Ram (1927). Ganga Ram (1851-1927) was an illustrious civil engineer from the Punjab who, after his graduation from the Roorkee College of Engineering, had made a marked ascent within the ranks of the PWD’s Engineering Establishment. He published the first edition of his Pocket Book, in Urdu, after returning from England where he had been sent briefly to receive training in “practical engineering” and architectural design.38 When his promotion to Superintending Engineer remained due, however, Ganga Ram retired from colonial service to focus exclusively on work for the princely state of Patiala and on private commissions such as the design and construction of the Hindu University buildings at Benares.39 His Pocket Book was intended to serve as both a pattern book and a technical reference for engineers, members of the PWD, as well as “laymen as might seek occasional help and guidance in Engineering and Building.”40 The section on reinforced brickwork features structural design theory, practical specifications, and drawings of distinct, patented methods of constructing various types of reinforced brick slabs: a patent ascribed to “Datta” (who might very well be A.K. Datta, an engineer on the Patna works whom Brebner thanks in his foreword), but also patents developed by Ganga Ram himself, such as for “Reinforced brickwork lime brickwork slabs” and “Reinforced brickwork lime concrete slabs”.41

• 42 The term “adivasi” is used as a collective term for the various tribes that make up the Indian sub (...)

33In the case of the Tinplate Bungalow, good quality brick and steel reinforcement are the main components of its construction. Considering that the jack arch system was already in use in various types of buildings such as the TISCO bungalows, the quality of brick that was being produced would also have been a significant element contributing to the choice of reinforced brick as a construction technology in Jamshedpur. In terms of geographical similarities, Coonoor, Patna, Delhi, Benares, and Jamshedpur are all located in riverine deltas, and have a long tradition of high-quality clay. Yet closely aligned with the question of the availability of materials is the question of who was involved in applying this building method and the availability of skilled labor. Why did reinforced brickwork construction, at the time still a novel technology, become part of the oeuvre of everyday building construction in Jamshedpur, an area that, at the time, was primarily forested land inhabited by various adivasi42 or tribal people, who were increasingly drawn into casual labor?

• 43 Michael Haag, The Durrells of Corfu, London : Profile Books, 2017, p. 9.
• 44 Ibid.
• 45 Lawrence Durrell, Construction Work In India—1921-1925, Jamshedpur: Edinburgh Press, Calcutta, 192 (...)

34In this respect, it is worthwhile to re-orient our attention for a moment to Lawrence Samuel Durrell, a British engineer who lived in the D6 Type bungalow that was mentioned above (see fig. 7) and had obtained the contract for the construction of the Tinplate mill and bungalows. Durrell was born in Bengal in 1885 and trained at the Roorkee Engineering College and the University of London. He spoke Hindi and Urdu.43 After working on railway projects in British India, he established Durrell & Co. Engineers and Contractors in 1920 and moved to Jamshedpur. The contract he obtained from the Tinplate Company included the tinplate mill, a brick-making plant, and over 400 workers’ houses, each with its garden, among other projects.44 On the Tinplate township site, Durrell’s contract required housing about 100 Europeans who were to be brought to India for the operations of the plant. He was responsible for constructing 58 bungalows of “various types” in the European Town.45 A portfolio of works of Lawrence Durrell in India between 1921 and 1925 (fig. 13) in the Tata Steel Archives mentions that the design and construction of the quarters for the Europeans and Indians were done by Frederick Charles Temple.

• 46 “Obituary: Colonel Frederick Charles Temple, CIE, CBE, VD, 1879-1957,” op. cit. (note 25), p. 197.

35Temple had served in the PWD before being appointed Chief Town Engineer by TISCO in 1919.46 Durrell & Co., so the portfolio states, was the manufacturer of bricks (burned at the site) and was also responsible for the supply of labor for the construction works of both the mill and housing. Considering that Durrell was also the contractor for other associated Tata companies such as Enamelled Ironware Ltd., the Indian Cable Co. Ltd., and many others between 1920 and 1927, Durrell & Co.’s expertise in constructing the Tinplate Bungalows suggests a sustained quality of construction and raw materials. Though it remains unclear who was decisive in the choice for reinforced brickwork, the involvement of Temple and Durrell as main directors of the material supply and works implies quality control throughout the process. The collaboration between a former PWD officer, a private contractor, and local workers attests to the existence of a shared constructional and technological body of work of which the Tinplate Bungalow is but one example.

• 47 “Introduction—Recognizing African Modernisms,” in Nina Berre, Paul Wenzel Geissler and Johan Lagae (...)

36The Tinplate Bungalow, I have argued here, is an appropriate example of how a seemingly “local” technology like reinforced brick is historically situated within the larger colonial context of British India. I have combined information gathered from fieldwork observation, early technical manuals and publications, and recent scholarship to demonstrate that the distinct architectural language of this mundane element of the porch of the Tinplate Bungalow was born out of and guided by the possibilities offered by the rather novel technology of reinforced brickwork. Reinforced brick achieved structural ingenuity, while enabling material improvisation, economy and efficiency. The Tinplate Bungalow can thus be viewed as a time capsule, “a crystallisation point for historical analysis of the period in which it was built.”47 As such, it allows us not only to engage with its materiality, but through an analysis of its mode of production, also make sense of the historical, political, and economic contexts within which reinforced brick technology—an otherwise lesser-known construction technology of early 20^th-century India—was more broadly located and developed.