Geoffrey Bawa

Architect, Sri Lanka
Geoffrey Bawa is a rare architect whose work combines an environmentally
appropriate beauty with a cultural sensitivity. Bawa was educated within the modernist
tradition in the West, where he was trained both as a lawyer and as an architect. An
urbane, widely read, and well-traveled person, he remains rooted in the soil of his native
land. His buildings are predicated on the landscape and climate—he is as much an
architect of landscape as he is of buildings.
To Bawa, the pitched roof is the archetype of southern Asian architecture. It is the
dominant element that governs his aesthetic, in which shape, texture, and proportion are
the strongest visual factors in his buildings. The great roof, with the building’s sides open
to the flow of air and the view, give “presence to both function and form, to admit beauty
and pleasure as well as purpose” (as told to the author, 1984). Another important feature
of his work deals with movement through the building, modulated by the rooms,
passages, and courtyards that frame vistas or parts of the landscape. Of equal importance
is the play of light, in both the built areas and the “rooms” of the landscaping, which
gives pleasure in addition to giving comfortable, functional use of the spaces. Bawa pays
careful attention to detail, ranging from the expression of structure to the furnishing of
rooms, regardless of the scale of the project.
Bawa has been fortunate to be in the position to choose his projects and select clients
who are sympathetic to his approach. They include artists and intellectuals, private
institutions, and government. The perception and organizational skills of his longtime
partner, Dr. Poologasundram, an engineer, has enabled the Bawa to realize the buildings
as conceived. He has worked with several others in his office for many years, and they
also assist him in the development of his ideas. However, Bawa remains the principal and
controls every aspect of the design.
Bawa designs using numerous freehand sketches, while simultaneously working on
the site layout plan, section, elevation, and details. His partners and colleagues begin to
formalize the work with schematic and working drawings. Often construction drawings
and details are discussed with the craftsman and are changed. In the mode of the master
architect, Bawa will alter his design on-site while the building is under construction. This
technique was even used on his large Parliament Complex Colombo which was built by a
Japanese company on a turnkey basis, but Bawa’s on-site decisions and solutions proved
better and more cost-effective than the original plan.
His personal residences best illustrate his approach to design. His country house,
Lunuganga, has been a continuing project since 1950. Set in a garden of 25 acres, the
house and its free-standing pavilions overlook terraces and a lake, and illustrate his
concerns with site and the expression of a contemporary vernacular. He has periodically
added new buildings and elements, such as a large concrete chess set and a grove of trees
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and benches. Each of the pavilions has its own character and fits into its natural setting. It
is perhaps his masterpiece, and was once described by one of the workmen as “a sacred
place.” His principal residence in Colombo dates from 1969, and consists of four
townhouses joined together with multiple small courtyards and a maze of rooms. It
illustrates well his characteristic skill in working with small spaces to create intimacy and
a sense of place.
The theme of pavilions set in a landscape typifies his architecture, as in the Ena de
Silva House (Colombo, 1962) and the 12 pavilion houses (1973) built in Batujimbar,
Indonesia, and designed with artist, Donald Friend. Low-cost schools such as Yahapath
Endra Farm School (1966) in Hanwella extend this approach into the realm of
institutional buildings. Bawa works this on an even larger scale at the University of
Ruhunu (1984–86) in Matara, on the southern coast. There he not only planned the
university, but also designed the Arts and Sciences faculty building as well as others.
Pavilions of varying size, some of which are placed on stilts, are arranged to take
advantage of the verdant site and the view to the sea.
Bawa is also known for his tourist beach hotels. Bentota Beach Hotel
(Bentota, 1969) has a dramatic entry staircase that spotlights the Sinhalese
batik cloths on the ceiling.

The Triton Hotel (1981) in Ahungalla has open
spaces and public facilities on the ground floor with bedrooms above, and all have vistas of the beach and sea. A
huge, ornamental entry pool leads to an open-sided reception area, which in turn
overlooks a swimming pool that appears to merge into the sea and sky. This progression
of spaces and visual effects is a common theme that appears in his work. Bawa’s
Kandalama Hotel (1995) in Dambulla is sited on a hillside and approached from a lake. It
takes full advantage of the views, and the concrete-frame structure is expressed in a
modernist facade.
This aesthetic and the use of concrete, steel, and glass mark some of his office
buildings and institutional complexes. His largest single structure, the Parliamentary
Complex in Kotte (1982), is set in an artificially constructed lake. Pavilions of varying
size flank the ceremonial building, with its large central volume containing the
government assembly chamber and ancillary spaces. The huge copper roofs are
reminiscent of monastic and royal buildings of the past yet convey a contemporary
image. Bawa’s buildings, both public and private, cover a range of types, and although
his work is often classified as “vernacular,” it is executed in varying styles.
Bawa’s work is contemporary yet seems to have existed in the landscape over the
ages; it is a truly timeless architecture. Artist Barbara Sansoni wrote that his work
“represents the distil-lation of centuries of shared experience, and links at the first level
of achievement, its ancient architecture to that of the modern world” (Taylor 1986).