Geoffrey Bawa

Highly personal in his approach, evoking the pleasures of the senses that go hand in hand with the climate, landscape, and culture of ancient Ceylon, Geoffrey Bawa brought together an appreciation of the Western humanist tradition in architecture with needs and lifestyles of his own country. Bawa has exerted a defining influence on the emerging architecture of independent Sri Lanka and on successive generations of younger architects. His ideas have spread across the island, providing a bridge between the past and the future, a mirror in which ordinary people can obtain a clearer image of their own evolving culture. In 2001, Geoffrey Bawa recieved the prestigious Chairmans Award from the Aga Khan Award for Architecture for his lifetime achievement.

Bawa’s early work included office buildings, factories and schools and was influenced by the ‘Tropical Modernism’ of Fry and Drew and ultimately by the work of le Corbusier. Typical of projects from this period are the remote Strathspey Tea Estate Bungalow at the foot of Adam’s Peak, and the classroom extension for Bishop’s College in Colombo.

In the classroom block for Bishops College the interiors were protected by perforated external wall panels which were supported on a concrete portal frame and inserted between the exposed beam-ends to give an impression of extreme lightness and delicacy.A heavy horizontal eaves beam was hung out to protect the facade and to mask the pitched roof, thus accentuating the horizontality and modernist credentials of the design.

Lunuganga Estate was the country home of the renowned Sri Lankan architect Geoffrey Bawa. Started in 1947, the garden led Bawa, a lawyer called to the Bar at the Inner Temple in 1940, to decide to become an architect. As he went on to become Sri Lanka’s and one of Asia’s most prolific and

influential architects, the garden at the Lunuganga estate remained his first muse and experimental laboratory for new ideas. He continued to change and experiment with its spaces and structures throughout his life until his final illness in 1998. Left to the Lunuganga Trust on his demise in 2003, the gardens are now open to the public and the buildings on the estate are run as a country house hotel.

33rd Lane Colombo, 1960-1970

The house in 33rd Lane is an essay in architectural bricollage. In 1958 Bawa bought the third in a row of four small houses which lay along a short cul-de-sac at the end of a narrow suburban lane and converted it into a pied-à-terre with living room, bedroom, tiny kitchen and room for a servant. When the fourth bungalow became vacant this was colonised to serve as dining room and second living room. Ten years later the remaining bungalows were acquired and added into the composition and the first in the row was demolished to be replaced by a four-storey tower.

At Heritance Kandalama Bawa created an austere building that derives its beauty from the surrounding landscape. The simple geometry and lack of decoration help to highlight the natural environment.

When he first built the hotel, he told the staff that one day it would peer out from under a canopy of lush vegetation. The staff didn’t fully grasp what he was describing. Ten years later, after Bawa was long gone, the staff say he had described the hotel exactly as it is today.

Bawa’s buildings are not just bricks and mortar, but the expression of intangible emotions. Heritance Kandalama is the living embodiment of Geoffrey Bawa’s architectural vision.

Source:
http://www.geoffreybawa.com/
http://www.greatbuildings.com