(Un)Authorised: Alternative Records of the Built Environment
7 October 2026 - 24 October 2026
Hill Station: Architecture and the Altitudes of Empire (2025), Edward Lawrenson / Kilian O'Dochartaigh
In 1899, colonial malaria research led to Hill Station, an all-European enclave above Freetown. This installation traces how race, health and climate became embedded in architecture linking Freetown and Liverpool.
In 1899, the newly established Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine sent an expedition to Freetown, Sierra Leone, to investigate malaria prevention. Among its recommendations was the creation of an exclusive enclave of ‘houses for Europeans’ on a plateau above the city, where the altitude would protect colonial settlers from the perceived dangers of the tropical environment. Hill Station: Architecture and the Altitudes of Empire traces the architectural history of this colonial settlement and its entanglement with the expansion of the British Empire and the emergence of tropical medicine. At the core of the installation are the ways ideas about health, race, climate, and disease became embedded in the built environment as well as the complex links between Freetown and Liverpool, two major port cities connected by colonial maritime trading networks.