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Deshamanya Geoffrey Manning Bawa,FRIBA(23 July 1919 27 May 2003)
was aSri Lankanarchitect.
He is the most renownedarchitectinSri Lankaand was among the
most influentialAsianarchitects of
his generation. He is the principal force behind what is today
known globally as tropical modernism.[1][
He became apprenticed to the architectural practice of Edwards
Reid and Begg inColomboafter he
advanced his education in architecture by gaining a Diploma in
Architecture from ArchitecturalAssociation, London in 1956 and in
the following year he became an Associate of theRoyal Institute
of
British Architectswhereupon he returned to Ceylon becoming a
partner of Messrs. Edwards, Reid and
Begg, Colombo in 1958. Bawa became an Associate of the Sri Lanka
Institute of Architects in 1960. An
ensuing close association with a coterie of like-minded artists
and designers, including Ena de Silva,
Barbara Sansoni and Laki Senanayake, produced a new awareness of
indigenous materials and crafts,
leading to a post colonial renaissance of culture.
Geoffrey Bawa's work range mainly in Sri Lanka, however he has
worked in several other countries as
well: nine times inIndia, three times inIndonesia, twice
inMauritiusand once inJapan,Pakistan,Fiji,
EgyptandSingapore. His works include houses, hotels, schools,
clubs, offices and government buildings,
most notably theSri Lankan Parliament Building
qualified as an architect in 1957 at the age of thirty-eight and
returned to Ceylon to take over what was
left of Reid's practice. He gathered together a group of
talented young designers and artists who shared
his growing interest in Ceylon's forgotten architectural
heritage, and his ambition to develop new ways
of making and building. As well as his immediate office
colleagues this group included the batik artist
Ena de Silva, the designer Barbara Sansoni and the artist Laki
Senanayake, all of whose work figures
prominently in his buildings. One of Bawa's earliest domestic
buildings, a courtyard house built in
Colombo for Ena De Silva in 1961, was the first to fuse elements
of traditional Sinhalese domestic
architecture with modern concepts of open planning,
demonstrating that an outdoor life is viable on a
tight urban plot.
Bawa's growing prestige was recognized in 1979, when he was
invited by President Jayawardeneto design Sri Lanka's new
Parliament at Kotte, 8 kilometres east of Colombo. At
Bawa'ssuggestion the swampy site was dredged to create an island at
the centre of a vast artificial lake,
with the Parliament building appearing as an asymmetric
composition of copper roofs floating
above a series of terraces rising out of the water. Abstract
references to traditional Sri Lankan
and South Indian architecture were incorporated within a
Modernist framework to create apowerful image of democracy,
cultural harmony, continuity and progress and a sense of gentle
monumentality.
During the 1980s Bawa also designed the new Ruhunu University
near Matara, a project that
enabled him to demonstrate his mastery of external space and the
integration of buildings in a
landscape. The result is a matrix of pavilions and courtyards,
arranged with careful casualnessand a strong sense of theatre
across a pair of rocky hills overlooking the southern ocean.
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