QC 006: SEJARAH SENIBINA

2008BRIDGING SENIBINA

• Geoffrey Bawa (1919–2003) is the most renowned architect in Sri Lanka and was among the most influential architects in southeast Asia in the last decades of the 20th century.

• Principal force behind what is today known globally as ‘tropical modernism’• Born in 1919 to wealthy parents of mixed European and Ceylonese descent. • He was educated at the prestigious Royal College after which he studied

English at Cambridge University gaining a BA (English Literature Tripods) and went on to study law at Middle Temple, London becoming a Barrister in 1944.

• Returning to Ceylon after the war he started working for a Colombo Law firm. But soon he left to travel for two years, almost settling in Italy.

• Architecture at the age of 38.

• Fundamental to his approach was empathy for place and a direct interaction on site. Both life and training shaped his ideas.

• A love of natural form, the discipline he learnt in England tempered by conviviality in elegant surroundings, his cosmopolitanism and a sense of culture and the past were essential components.

• Bawa’s attitude to life imbued his work with a sybaritic ethos, which is ubiquitous in his designs.

• The existing potential of the natural landscape was always accommodated within and around Bawa’s spaces.

• He blended them so beautifully that ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ became a continuum.

• Quintessentially, Geoffrey Bawa’s architecture produced canvasses for the art of living so unobtrusive that his forms became props which ‘respect, enhance and celebrate the environment’ and are above all, to be enjoyed.

Advancement and promotion of education and knowledge and the furtherance of interest in:• Ecological and environmental studies including inter alia Botany, Zoology,

Bird Sanctuary, Natural History, Nature Study, Preservation of Wild Life, Fauna and Flora, Environmental Landscaping and associated fields of study;

• Architecture• Fine Arts such as Painting, Music, Drama, Sculpture, Scientific Technical or

Literary work. • To grant assistance in the form of studentships, scholarships, Bursaries,

Loans, Allowances, Payment for or in Reimbursement of the cost of travel (Both inland / and / or abroad) Books, Equipment, Fees and Other expenses incurred in the promotion and furtherance or the foregoing objects.

• To establish maintain and manage galleries for the fine arts, museums, libraries, reading rooms, cultural centres, research libraries and facilities.

• To subsidize art classes in school and educational institutions and to organize lectures, tours, picnics, public meetings, for promotion and furtherance of foregoing objects;

• To carry on and maintain any undertaking by itself or in association with any other organization, government or private and whether affiliated to any foreign or international organization and encourage interest in the forgoing objects.

• For the purpose of doing all other acts and things as may be necessary to the attainment of the objects.

Geoffrey Bawa: A portfolio of projects

• 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.

Mahaweli Development Ministry

Variant Names : Mahaweli Development MinistryStreet Address : Darley RoadLocation : Colombo, Sri LankaArchitect/Planner : Geoffrey bawaDate : 1976-1978Century : 20thDecade : 1970sBuilding Types : Commercial, GovermentBuilding Usage : Bank, Goverment Office

• This uncharacteristic twelve-storey office building was commissioned by the government of the day to house the State Mortgage Bank.

• Completed after the UNP's election victory in 1977, it was redesignated the main secretariat of the Mahaweli Development Ministry.

• The lozenge-shape plan was developed with Anura Ratnavibushana and results in a profile that changes dramatically according to viewpoint, appearing slender towards the junction and much flatter towards the park and the lake.

• Floating concrete canopy that reveals the geometric logic of the concrete structure below. The objective was to provide a working environment that could be lit and ventilated by natural means in a building of moderate height that did not impose undue strains on the immediate urban infrastructuee.

• The main elevations face north and south in order to reduce solar gain and catch the main breezes; windows are set back from deep spandrel panels designed as air-intake louvres.

• A tropical city. Sadly no attempt was made by the client to monitor its performance or modify its details and the demands of offshore property developers and international clients prevailed in Colombo, giving rise to a crop of sealed-glass, energy-guzzling towers in the main business district.

De Soysa House

Location : Colombo, Sri LankaArchitect/Planner : Geoffrey BawaClient : Cecil and Chloe de SoysaDate :1985-1991Century : 20thDecade : 1980sBuilding Type : residentialBuilding Usage :Private residence

• Cecil had been chairman of the Ceylon Hotels Corporation when the Bentota Beach Resort was built at the end of the 1960s and had later become a private hotel developer, while his wife Chloe ran a boutique and gallery on Wijerama Mawatha in Colombo.

• The de Soysas owned an old house with a large garden that stretched between Wijerama Mawatha and Boyd Place.

The house belongs to Bawa's canon of tower houses. A drawing dated 1985 carries a scribbled note from Bawa to his client:  Dear Chloe, - an office on the ground floor 65 feet long by 14 feet [later a verandah for the house] looking over the garden and expandable into what is now the car port and, as a car port, not counted in the calculation of the 3,000-square-foot maximum area. The first floor needs no explanation. The main bedroom on the second floor is surrounded and shaded by planting in a 3-foot-wide trough. Windows on all three sides with white curtains. A 7-foot-high cupboard separates sleeping from dressing. This would need careful detailing later. The roof is part pergola and part open to the moon and stars - and a view over the neighbouring trees. Hope you like it! (Geoffrey, 6 July 1985)

 • The main living room and bedroom are glazed on three sides using dark

anodized aluminium sliding sashes. • The house is surrounded by tall trees and dense vegetation and the narrow

window frames seem to melt into the background of branches and creepers. • This is a far cry from earlier, apparently more traditional, designs: the

deceptively simple plans, the white walls and the contrasting frames represent a further move towards the minimalism to which Bawa was increasingly drawn.

Bentota Beach HotelLocation : Bentota, Sri LankaArchitect/Planner : Geoffrey BawaClient : Bentota Beach HotelDate : 1967-1969Century : 20thDecade : 1960sBuilding Type : commercialBuilding Usage :Hotel

Plan of De Soysa House

• He was therefore able to design a modern building that reflected something of the culture and traditions of its milieu without descending into parody or pastiche, a building that offered subtle hints of a lost world of ancient palaces, medieval manor houses and colonial villas while still addressing the needs of the modern traveler.

• The design treated the site and surroundings with respect and played on all five senses to capture the unique spirit of the place.

• As such it was one of the first hotels of its kind to be built anywhere in Asia. • The site itself was an inspired choice: on one side of a spit of land the white-

topped waves of the Indian Ocean broke over a distant reef and rolled in towards a long sandy beach fringed with palm trees, while on the other the Bentota River slid lazily along its mangrove-clad banks towards the sea.

• The original brief asked for extensive public spaces but stipulated only thirty bedrooms.

• Twenty rooms were contained in an additional wing to the north, with forty more rooms added later in a new southern wing.

• The apparent simplicity of the plan belies its spatial complexities and the subtleties of its section.

• The mound was encased in a rubble podium that mimicked old Dutch fortifications and contained a shopping arcade and links to the service areas.

• The main reception spaces were placed on top of the mound and took the form of an enfilade of rooms around a square courtyard.

• Two floors of bedrooms were placed in an L-shaped wing on adjacent sides of the square.

Club Villa Hotel

Location : Bentota, Sri LankaArchitect/Planner : Geoffrey BawaClient : Bentota Beach HotelDate : 1979Century : 20thDecade : 1970sBuilding Type : commercial, residentialBuilding Usage :hotel, private residence

• Construction inspired by the form of a house dated to 1880 that had fallen into disrepair, was focused around this beachside two-story block and its bedrooms.

• Once purchased in 1979 the loggia, courtyard, bedrooms and kitchens were appended to the remnants of the original house.

• A swimming pool was built in the courtyard.

OTHERS BUILDING BY BAWA’S

33rd lane

Abu Nawas Development Project

McLean Residence

Blue Water Hotel

Awards and Fellowships• Pan Pacific Citation, Hawaii Chapter of the American Institute of Architects

(1967) • President, Sri Lanka Institute of Architects (1969) • Inaugural Gold Medal at the Silver Jubilee Celebration of the Sri Lanka

Institute of Architects (1982) • Heritage Award of Recognition, for “Outstanding Architectural Design in the

Tradition of Local Vernacular Architecture”, for the new Parliamentary Complex at Sri Jayawardenepura, Kotte from the Pacific Area Travel Association. (1983)

• Elected Honorary Fellow of the American Institute of Architects (1983) • Conferred title of Vidya Jothi (Light of Science) in the Inaugural Honours List

of the President of Sri Lanka (1985) • Teaching Fellowship at the Aga Khan Programme for Architecture, at MIT,

Boston , USA (1986) • Conferred title Deshamanya (Pride of the Nation) in the Honours List of the

President Sri Lanka (1993) • The Grate Master's Award 1996 incorporating South Asian Architecture

Award (1996) • The Architect of the Year Award, India (1996) • Asian Innovations Award, Bronze Award – Architecture, Far Eastern

Economic Review (1998) • The Chairman's Award of the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in recognition

of a lifetime's achievement in and contribution to the field of architecture (2001)

• Awarded Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa), University of Ruhuna ( 14 th September 2002 )

Died  on  27  May  2003  at  the  age  of  84.  Bawa  was  an architect  of  great  reputed whose  work  had  a  tremendous impact 

throughout  Asia.  He  was  accepted  as  an  eminent  scholar  worldwide.

THE END

BY:

MOHAMMAD LUTFI B. YAHYA - 01BSB07F2009

MUHAMMAD SYAWAL BIN AB. MALIK -01BSB07F2010

NORHISSHAM B. MOHD ARSHAD – 01BSB07F2011

FALIQ RAZIN BIN ALIAS-01BSB07F2031